Rapist, former fugitive gets four-year sentence
The young Ottawa woman lives in fear of her rapist and is sometimes too afraid to go outside.
Some four years after she was raped and beaten by Mathew McAuliff, she still struggles to think about it because it makes her feel as if she's drowning.
“He is a monster who lives his life with no understanding of consequences, or morals,” she told court last week in a haunting victim-impact statement at McAuliff's sentencing hearing for sexual assault causing bodily harm. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
She said she used to believe there was good in everyone, but after the psychological, emotional, physical and sexual abuse “he put me through, I no longer exist in this world believing in goodness or having faith in people.”
The monster, she said, broke that part of her beyond repair.
She said at just 19, her world went “dark and scary and full of pain.” She said she's been left terrified for the last four years. She fears retaliation, particularly because McAuliff has shown a distinct disregard for the rules of society by skipping his original sentencing and living as a fugitive for nine months.
She said her fear of retaliation is based on his horrifying crimes.
“I have seen his extreme rage first-hand, and I have experienced and lived with the bruises and scars from the severe violence.”
She has flashbacks of the 2016 rape and beating. She said her mind goes back, and it's like a repeating loop of the sadistic attack.
“He bit me so sadistically and repeatedly all over my breasts, ribs, hips and arms that I have scars on my body that will be there for the rest of my life, ensuring that I will always be reminded of the sexual assault.”
The sight of her scars ruins simple, peaceful moments like taking a bath, she said.
“I feel broken.”
McAuliff, known for heartless manipulation, evaded Ottawa police for nine months after skipping his original sentencing last year while out on bail.
After the court issued an arrest warrant, Ottawa police declined to issue a news release about the rapist at large, saying it was against policy because they considered the rape and vicious beating to be a
“domestic” file. (McAuliff met the teen online, and twice in person.)
His parents didn't find out about their son's rape case until they read it in the Citizen. They told police where they could find him, and months later he was arrested.
His family was shocked at the rape and beating conviction because it was out of character, according to court filings.
By all accounts, McAuliff, 31, had a hard childhood, and was committed to a mental hospital for a year in his early teens.
He wasn't co-operative with police, and had no time for his probation officer, at least early on, according to court filings. In fact, he didn't show up four times to meet his probation officer. But later, in a June 2019 interview with his probation officer, he said it sickened him to be labelled a sex offender and questioned the motivation of the complainant.
He then shifted, and accepted the reality before him in court, and said in 2019 that he expected a prison term and wanted to make the most of it to better himself. Also, since he's been in custody, court filings show he now regrets his crimes and understands the toll the court process had on the victim. In the vicious December 2016 sex attack, the young woman begged him to stop and was told if she screamed or tried to run, he'd “really get mean,” court heard.
She was kneed and punched during the attack.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Calum MacLeod, who convicted McAuliff, said he “gratified his need to inflict pain by engaging in extreme acts of biting the complainant's breasts and inflicting severe and extreme bruising on her thighs through beating, punching and kneeing her.
“He ignored her protestations and pleas to stop. He induced her not to scream or leave the room by threatening to make it worse.”
The judge branded McAuliff a heartless manipulator who persuaded his teen victim to boost her credit card limit to cover the cost of supper at the casino and a night's stay at the Hilton.
He ordered expensive wine and promised to pay her back right away. But he gave her forged cheques from his mother's account, which bounced.