Rapist, 25, told Spanish teen he had ‘killed six people’

A MAN who abducted a teenage Spanish student in Dublin and raped her repeatedly over a 21-hour period will be sentenced next week.

And a court heard yesterday how he told the victim, then aged 18, he had previously ‘killed six people’.

Eoin Berkley, 25, of Hampton Wood Way, Finglas, Dublin, admitted three counts of raping the girl at the Irish Glass Bottle Company site on Pigeon House Road, at a time unknown between July 15 and 16, 2017.

The student, described as naive and shy, had come to Ireland to improve her English and was staying with a host family in Dublin. She was on a day out in the city centre on a Saturday when she met Berkley, who told her he lived on the beach and invited her to see where he lived.

She agreed and walked with him to a derelict site near Sandymount where he had a tents pitched. Once inside the tent his mood changed; he pushed her to the ground and grabbed her hands. She told him he was hurting her but he laughed and told her he had ‘done this before’.

She left the tent but Berkley dragged her back in. He tied her hands up and told her he had previously killed six people and was going to kill her. Over the hours that followed Berkley raped the woman on three separate occasions. She escaped when he took her down to the beach and he fell asleep.

In a victim-impact statement read into court, the woman said she thought she was going to be killed during the attack and that she is now afraid to sleep in the dark.

She said she thinks about what happened every day.

Berkley’s 25 previous convictions include unlawful possession of knives and a realistic firearm, and threatening and abusive behaviour.

After the hearing at the Central Criminal Court, Judge Michael White adjourned sentencing, saying that time was needed to consider the appropriate sentence. He remanded Berkley in continuing custody to Thursday, November 1.