Irish Daily Mirror

Dating website beast raped woman 4 times

Brute Ziflai, 22, jailed for nine years

- BY ISABEL HAYES and SONYA MCLEAN news@irishmirro­r.ie

A MAN who repeatedly raped a woman he met on a dating website after giving a false name has been jailed for nine years.

Bajo Ziflai, 22, was found guilty by a jury of four counts of raping the 23-yearold woman.

He was found guilty on one count of sexually assaulting her at an address in Co Galway following a Central Criminal Court trial in July last year. Ziflai was 20-years-old at the time of the attack.

Sentencing him yesterday, Ms Justice Eileen Creedon noted Ziflai has shown no remorse or acknowledg­ed the harm he caused to the woman on the night in question. He does not accept the verdicts of the jury and continues to maintain the woman made up the allegation­s because she was “attention seeking”.

Ziflai, of Lacken Valley, New Ross, Co Wexford, has no previous conviction­s. He has been in custody since shortly after the attack.

The court heard Ziflai met the woman on a dating website and gave her a false name. They arranged to meet at a house and she was driven there by her mother.

She told him in advance there would be no sexual activity between them.

She later told gardai they were conversing over Snapchat and Ziflai acknowledg­ed the woman’s message and replied “OK”.

Despite this, Ziflai raped the woman four times and sexually assaulted her before she managed to leave the house and call her mother.

Ms Justice Creedon noted the attack was pre-meditated by Ziflai.

Because he refuses to acknowledg­e his wrongdoing and has not expressed any remorse for his actions, Ms Justice Creedon said there was no mitigation open to Ziflai.

She noted he has no previous conviction­s, is still a young man and has a long life ahead of him upon his release from prison. The judge handed down a 10-year jail sentence, and suspended the final year on a number of conditions.

Ziflai will be placed on the Sex Offenders Register. The court heard that Ziflai had come to Ireland from Albania and had been living with his brother in Wexford.

The woman stated in her victim impact statement that she went to meet what “I thought was a nice man” but that meeting “changed my life forever”.

She said: “I have two whys. Why did I go there?

Why did he rape me?”

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