DOUBLE RAPIST’S APPEAL FAILS
A MAN who twice raped a schoolgirl at his sister’s 18th birthday party has failed in an appeal against his conviction, for which he was jailed for 12 years.
Richard O’Mara (32), formerly of Walnut Avenue, Kingswood, Tallaght, Dublin 24, was jailed for twice raping the teenager on October 18, 2015.
He had pleaded not guilty to both counts of rape at his family home of Ballymulcashel, Kilmurry, Sixmilebridge, Co Clare, but was found guilty by a Central Criminal Court jury in April 2019.
The victim, who was then a 17-yearold schoolgirl, said she was so afraid of seeing him again that she did not leave her bedroom for two months.
Trial judge Ms Justice Tara Burns described it as a ‘vicious, horrifying attack’ in which O’Mara had used ‘deceit, violence and force’ in the first rape before subjecting her to an ‘even more vicious rape’ in his house, in “a scenario that beggars belief”.
The first rape occurred in a field to the rear of the house where the party was held while the second was on a couch inside the house after it ended.
In a victim impact statement, the victim said that this was her first experience of sex and that O’Mara had “robbed” her of her virginity and left her bleeding for a week afterwards.
Evidence
In June 2019, Ms Justice Burns jailed O’Mara for 14 years but suspended the final two on conditions. Restrictions were lifted at the time to allow publication of O’Mara’s name.
Yesterday the three-judge Court of Appeal dismissed O’Mara’s conviction appeal, where he had claimed gardaí had failed to examine the scene and that an evidence corroboration warning was not issued to the jury.
The appellant’s barrister, Michael Delaney SC, focused on the refusal of the court to stop the trial in light of the “failure of gardaí to conduct any examination at the scene” when the rape allegation was first made to them eight months after the attacks.
In a written judgement dismissing the appeal, Ms Justice Úna Ní Raifeartaigh said the “gardaí did not fail in their duty to investigate, and the test of a real risk of an unfair trial by reason of a failure to investigate something which might have been an obvious line of defence has not been satisfied”.