Rapist gets 17 years for sex attacks that left girl suicidal

A MAN has been jailed for 17 years for rapes and repeated sexual assaults on a girl who he manipulated and groomed from the ages of 12 to 14.

Patrick O’Dea’s victim, Leona O’Callaghan, who bravely waived her anonymity yesterday to name and shame him, told the Central Criminal Court that O’Dea, now aged 52, ‘got inside my head and messed it up’.

‘For a long time you had me scared out of my wits. How I wish I could go back and give that paranoid, frightened child a hug,’ she wrote.

The victim sobbed in court as Judge Deirdre Murphy read excerpts from the victim-impact statement before sentencing O’Dea.

O’Dea, of Pike Avenue, Limerick, pleaded guilty on the second day of his trial at the Central Criminal Court to charges of sexual assault and rape on dates in 1994 and 1995. The victim was aged 12 to 14 at the time.

He had 42 previous convictions include a single sexual assault on another girl, who was aged under ten. He received a 15-year sentence for multiple rape and sexual assaults of one girl over a six-year period between 1998 and 2004.

Yesterday Judge Murphy imposed a sentence of 18-and-a-half years on O’Dea. She suspended the last 18 months in recognition of his plea of guilty and his willingness to take part in a psychological assessment.

The judge noted the appalling nature of the damage done to Ms O’Callaghan, who has carried out three suicide attempts.

The victim said: ‘You were there in my mind every time I took a blade to my body to hurt and cut myself hundreds of times to punish myself for the horrible person I became.

‘You were there in my mind on the three occasions I slit my wrists and took tablet after tablet to try to die and finally let all this be over. One of those times was in the graveyard where you raped me for the first time. I wanted all the pain to end where the pain began.’