Midlands rape trial: ‘Evil had not come to my door until then,’ says victim as men to be sentenced

A woman who was 17 when four men raped her in a car on St Stephen’s night five years ago has said she blames herself for getting into the vehicle that night.

In the early hours of the morning of December 27th, 2016, the girl got into a car after she heard one of the occupants call out her full name. She was then driven to a remote location and repeatedly raped and assaulted.

In a lengthy victim impact statement, which she read out at the Central Criminal Court on Monday, the woman said she thought it was her friends collecting her to bring her home at the end of a night out in Tullamore, Co Offaly.

She told Justice Tara Burns that before the night of the attacks, she was a sociable, happy and hard-working Leaving Cert student who was somewhat innocent.

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“Evil had not come to my door until then,” she said. The woman had left her friends on the night to go to a different takeaway and then found herself walking home alone after giving up on finding a taxi in the town.

“I blame myself for choosing to be selective about my food, for not staying with my friends ... I still hate myself for getting into the car, innocently assuming it must be my friends,” she said.

She said she believed the car must have contained her friends coming back to take her home safely.

She said that although the defence lawyers left her with her dignity, she found it difficult to be “badgered about the first time I said stop” and about not fighting back.

“I am glad I didn’t become violent or fight back. Any time I showed any bit of refusal I was met with more force. I think I made the right decision, given the situation I was in and the people I was with,” she said.

She said she went from being a studious person who believed “if I worked hard enough I could do what I wanted in life” to someone who felt stupid.

She said the events of the night consumed her mind, “because I was so stupid to get into that car”, and she dropped out of a number of college courses.

She said her life had been turned upside down. She has suffered from PTSD and said this can resurface in a completely unpredictable way.

“I felt like spoilt goods. I was robbed of my right to be a dignified human being in my own body,” she said. She said she felt at times like she was a dishevelled human being.

During this journey the girl, who had been instructed to lay across the laps of the three men sitting in the back seat, felt a hand moving inside her skirt. She became flustered, and the front-seat passenger, Gabriel Gomes Da Rocha (24), then invited her to come into the front with him.

Da Rocha then began to fondle her and the girl felt hands reaching from the back and the side to grope her. She later told gardaí that the men were talking as if she wasn’t there and someone said: “Ah lads, she is good, we are all getting it tonight.”

She told gardaí that she kept pushing the hands away but the men continued to sexually assault her.

Da Rocha, of Mount Armstrong, Rahan, Tullamore, Co Offaly; back-seat passengers Eduardo Dias Ferreira Filho (24), of Riverview, Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath, and Ethan Nikolaou (23) of Brosna Park, Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath; and the driver of the car, Marcos De Silva Umbelino (22), also of Riverview, Kilbeggan, were all convicted of sexually assaulting the girl in the car on this journey.

They had all denied these charges and the other charges the jury convicted them of. Their lawyers told the Central Criminal Court on Monday that they accepted the jury verdicts, which came after a four-week trial that ended on April 7.

Justice Burns adjourned the case to 2pm on Thursday for finalisation. She remanded the five men in custody.