Sex attacker Lyons out of prison a day early... but family say it’s ‘a curse’ he is free
ANTHONY Lyons has walked free from jail a day early – but the family of the young woman he savagely attacked have said it is ‘a curse’ that he can again live near them.
Despite being jailed twice for his crime, the millionaire sex predator spent only 543 days in total – less than 18 months – locked up since his ‘frightening’ attack on a young woman in 2010.
With remission on his latest 18-month sentence, his official release date was today, Saturday, September 12. But he had asked prison bosses to let him out early to help him avoid excessive ‘media interest’.
At 8.20am yesterday, the aviation businessman, 54, casually walked out the front door of Dublin’s Arbour Hill Prison and got into a waiting taxi unaccompanied.
He ignored questions from a group of no more than five journalists. He is free to return to the large house on Dublin’s upmarket Griffith Avenue that he shares with his wife Eileen Lyons and two children.
One veteran prison official said the decision to free Lyons early ‘beggars belief ’, adding: ‘You just wonder where the victim lies in all this.’
The Irish Prison Service said it does not comment on individual prisoner matters.
Five years ago, Lyons rugby-tackled the young woman near his Griffith Avenue home, dragged her into trees and sexually attacked her. He first denied attacking her but eventually gave a statement to gardaí admitting to it but blamed his actions on a cholesterol drug he had started taking the day before.
His victim has since remarked that she will never get over the ‘brutality’ of the attack. Her family say they have been put through five years of ‘torture’ since the attack.
The family – who close to Lyons’s home – expressed their concern last night. The father of his victim told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘It’s a curse. We are going to see each other.’
The mother of his victim said: ‘We want to put this behind us now. But it’s a bad feeling to know he is out from behind bars. I am anxious. Once my family is okay and once my daughter is okay, that’s my number one concern. We have to try and carry on.’
Residents groups in north Dublin said that local women are likely to be concerned at Lyons’s release. Kathryn Mulready, former chairperson of the All Hallows residents group in Dublin 9, said she hopes that people will ‘think twice’ about walking home late at night in the area from now on.
Donal Ó Brolcháin, who himself lives on Griffith Avenue and is chairman of a local residents group, said: ‘We would refer those kind of fears to the guards. If it becomes an issue.’
Today, the young woman’s family relaunch a campaign to ‘ end soft sentencing’. Their change.org petition – calling for sentences of at least eight years for violent sex offenders – has been signed by almost 900 people since it was first revealed by the Irish Daily Mail last year. It will be presented to Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald in February.
Furious at ‘lenient’ prison terms handed to sex offenders, family members are appealing to the public to join the campaign online. One close relative said: ‘We would ask people to make an effort to sign.’ The young woman’s father told the Mail: ‘You would expect him [Lyons] to serve longer. I blame those at the top – right up to the Minister for Justice – for sitting back. For such a serious crime there has to be minimum sentences. If Lyons knew he’d serve a minimum of eight to ten years, would he have done the crime?’
The relative said: ‘ We all feel the time he spent in prison was very short. It’s only a fraction of what anyone like him should serve. He deserved a lot more.
‘I’m sure that every mother would feel the same about their own chil- dren. Any of us who’d have a daughter or son attacked in that manner would want reasonable justice.’
The father added that if he could have one wish, he would turn back time and rescue his daughter. He told the Mail: ‘I’d be waiting when he [Lyons] was hiding in the trees waiting on my daughter.’
Early yesterday morning, an expressionless Lyons walked out of Arbour Hill Prison – dressed in a dark suit with a backpack slung over one shoulder – and calmly got into the back seat of a waiting taxi.
He said nothing when asked by a reporter if he regretted his crime.
There has been speculation that he may now move to London, where he is believed to have business interests. There, he would have to sign on the sex offenders’ register for life.
In Ireland, he will remain on the sex offenders’ register until 2022 and be monitored by the Probation Service for the next year. He must also enter into a ‘good behaviour’ bond for three years following his release.
The initial sentence Lyons received for his ‘frightening’ October 2010 late-night attack – six years with all but six months suspended – was challenged by State prosecutors amid public uproar.
But delays in the appeal courts allowed Lyons to walk free from jail in December 2012 before his sentence could be extended. He then embarked on a new life in London and was spotted relaxing with his family at a five-star resort in Dubai ahead of the State’s appeal.
On July 31, 2014, Lyons was jailed for a further 18 months after appeal judges declared his original sixmonth term ‘unduly lenient’.
With standard remission for good behaviour, he was expected to serve 13-and-a-half months of that term, or just over 400 days.
‘It’s a bad feeling knowing he is out’
IT seems scarcely possible that Anthony Lyons, the businessman who carried out a brutal sexual assault on a woman walking home at night in 2010, is once again a free man.
His original lenient sentence caused outrage before it was reviewed and extended, and he was jailed a second time, but still has served just 543 days in total.
In addition, in order to avoid waiting media outside Arbour Hill prison, Lyons successfully pleaded to be released a day early, a decision that caused one prison official to ponder: ‘You just wonder where the victim lies in all this.’
Where indeed? The kid glove treatment given to her attacker is in very sharp contrast to the enduring hell she must deal with for the rest of her life. She has received counselling and has returned to work but has said she never will fully get over the brutality of the assault.
Her father says the entire family has been through five years of torture, now exacerbated by the fact that they live close to Lyons, who owns a house on Dublin’s Griffith Avenue, and are highly likely to cross paths with him.
It is a cornerstone of our justice system that everyone who leaves prison has the right to start afresh, to achieve some sort of redemption once the debt to society has been cleared. The problem here is that Lyons’s debt, even after it was reviewed, seems to have been very little.
Far too often, we have seen the courts hand down sentences for rape and sexual assault that are staggering in their brevity. The family of Lyons’s victim are petitioning for a minimum tariff of eight years for anyone found guilty, though even that sounds a little on the light side of reasonable.
Sexual violence is the crime women most fear. The threat of it is a constant worry, and there will be many who live close to Lyons who now once again will be fearful when doing the simplest of things – walking home.
His case should be a line in the sand. For the sake of women everywhere, sex attackers must be given longer sentences, to act as a deterrent and to restore the eroded sense of personal safety that women, just like men, should be able to take for granted.