How victims of the ‘Tinder rapist’ were let down by our justice system
VIOLENT SEX OFFENDER WAS CAUGHT CARRYING STUN GUN THREE YEARS EARLIER .... BUT WAS SET FREE
THE dangerous leniency of the criminal justice system was exposed yesterday after it emerged that a violent sex offender was free to rape and sexually assault three women he met on Tinder.
Convicted sex offender Patrick Nevin, 36, was freed in 2006 after serving just five years for savagely beating his ex-girlfriend and killing her two dogs with a bannister rail. This is despite a previous conviction in Denmark for rape and aggravated rape in 1999.
Five years later, in 2011, the violent offender escaped a jail term after he was caught with two stun guns on Waterloo Road in Dublin.
The UCD graduate and father of two received a four-year suspended sentence for that offence.
This meant he was free to rape and sexually assault three women he met on Tinder in the space of just 11 days in July 2014.
Sentencing the software engineer to seven years in 2001, the judge said he believed Nevin would have followed through on his threat to kill his girlfriend, Jennifer Arkins, and said he believed he would harm women again.
His ex-girlfriend’s family spoke out against the sentence at the time, saying it should have been doubled.
Despite this, the convicted sex offender was free in 2014 to carry out sex attacks on three women.
Yesterday, Nevin pleaded guilty to two of these sex attacks on women in Meath. He was convicted of the third attack, on a Brazilian student, last December.
All of the attacks were on women he met through Tinder on their first date. A fourth woman also accused him of raping her in the Dublin mountains during a Tinder date in September 2014. However, Nevin was acquitted of these charges by a jury last June.
Yesterday, Nevin pleaded guilty to raping a woman in a parked car in Bellewstown in Co. Meath on July 12, 2014. The plea came at the opening of his trial at the Central Criminal Court.
Nevin and the woman had met on the dating app Tinder and the attack took place on their first date. He also pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a second woman at an unknown place in Co. Meath on July 16, 2014.
He was facing trial later this year in relation to this third victim.
His last-minute guilty plea followed a legal ruling on Monday that would have allowed the prosecution to introduce evidence from two other women of Nevin attacking them on a first date.
Last December Nevin was convicted by a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court of sexually assaulting a Brazilian student on the UCD campus in south Dublin on July 23, 2014. He is due to be sentenced for the offence shortly.
All three attacks occurred over an
Girlfriend prayed for a ‘quick death’
11-day period in July 2014 and took place when Nevin had met up with the women after talking to them first online. In each case, Nevin picked the women up in his car on a first date and drove them to a secluded spot.
The father of two has been in custody since his conviction last December. He will be sentenced for the two other sex attacks on July 26. Nevin had a previous conviction for sexual assault and oral rape from when he was a minor living in Denmark in 1999.
His father told the Irish Daily Mail that his son was deported back to Ireland after that case.
‘I didn’t know the details myself because I wasn’t in on the case. But I know that he was sent back,’ he said. He described his son as being ‘quite difficult but very bright’.
In 2001, a jury heard how Nevin subjected his then girlfriend to a terrifying ordeal of choking, hitting her with a brick, kicking her in the head, punching her and spitting in her face. Jennifer Arkins, who was 22 at the time, suffered a fractured skull and serious cuts and bruises after Nevin flew into a jealous rage following a night out.
He asked her how she would like to die – either by choking or stabbing – and told her he had killed ten women and she was going to be ‘number 11’.
Ms Arkins told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that she prayed for a quick death as she was choked, punched, kicked, spat on and beaten. Nevin first killed Ms Arkins’s two pet dogs, a labrador pup, and a four-month-old Shitzu, with a bannister rail.
The court heard how the incident started at Sinnott’s pub on South King Street, Dublin. A party had been organised where both were employed. Ms Arkins was named female office heart-throb but Nevin was incensed when there was a suggestion she would go for dinner with the male winner.
She left the pub and later returned to the house at St Brigid’s Avenue, North Strand, that she shared with Nevin.
There she was confronted by the sight of her two dogs in the hall, beaten to death by Nevin with a bannister rail. Nevin then emerged from a room holding a knife and demanding to know where she had been. Fuelled by 14 pints of Budweiser, he attacked her, punching her repeatedly in the face.
After the brutal attack, she managed to escape when Nevin fell asleep. She had to be treated in Beaumont Hospital. Speaking after the trial, Ms Arkins’s mother, Marie Metcalfe, expressed anger at the sentence handed down to Nevin.
She told the Mirror: ‘He should have got seven years alone for what he did to the dogs and another seven years for what he did to my daughter.’ With an automatic right to 25% remission, he was released from jail in 2006.
In October 2011, Nevin received a four-year suspended sentence for possession of two stun guns on Waterloo Road in 2012.
THE appalling failings of our criminal justice system have been clear for many years now – and this newspaper has drawn particular attention to the scandal of hopelessly inadequate sentencing.
It is difficult to think of a case that illustrates the shortcomings in sharper focus than that of Patrick Nevin.
The fact that such a violent recidivist had been free to commit a series of sexual offences is an utter indictment of the existing system.
Details of Nevin’s previous record make for frightening reading. When he was still a minor, he was kicked out of Denmark after being convicted of rape.
In 2001, he was jailed for seven years, at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, after he launched a vicious attack on his then girlfriend and killed both of her pet dogs.
The court heard that the woman, who suffered a fractured skull during the sustained assault, prayed for a ‘quick death’ as she was punched, kicked and choked.
The victim’s mother said at the time that the sentence should have been twice as long. Even the presiding judge told Nevin that he had seen ‘no evidence… to suggest you will not harm women again’.
It is therefore all the more astonishing that Nevin was let off with a suspended sentence after a 2011 conviction for possessing a stun gun.
If it is the case that the courts here were unaware of his rape conviction in Denmark, questions need to be asked about the way EU member states share data on crime. But if the Irish authorities did know of that previous offence, it raises bigger issues. Either way, the judge’s remarks in the 2001 case should have sounded alarm bells.
The bottom line is that Patrick Nevin walked free and, three years later, carried out a series of horrific sexual attacks on at least three women. The criminal justice system failed these victims in the most abysmal way.
Nothing can undo the hurt and damage they have suffered. But it might be of some small consolation to them if Patrick Nevin was never allowed walk the streets again, unless the relevant authorities are satisfied he is no longer a danger to women.
Meanwhile, it behoves our political leaders to conduct an urgent review of sentencing policy. The protection of the public must always be the paramount consideration – especially when it comes to violent sexual offenders.