ROMANIAN WHO REPEATEDLY RAPED TEEN WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY HAD PRIOR CONVICTIONS IN ROMANIA, GERMANY

A man who repeatedly and violently raped a teenage girl who has an intellectual disability has been jailed for six and a half years. 

Costel Pirvu (39) came to Ireland in December 2017 and carried out the attack on the girl, who was then 19 years old, in a town in the west of Ireland on February 4th 2018. 

Pirvu, with a previous address in Loughrea, Co Galway, had three previous convictions in Romania and Germany, including for robbery, attempted rape and assault, the Central Criminal Court heard.

The court found him guilty of three counts of rape and one of false imprisonment after a nine-day trial last year, and today Ms Justice Deirdre Murphyhanded down a 10 year sentence but suspended the last 3 and a half years. 

The girl had been out with friends who had walked her half way home when Pirvu grabbed her and forced her to the ground against a black jeep in the early hours of the morning. 

He took off her trousers and raped her even as she fought to escape, and she suffered bruises and cuts to her arms, legs and her back. 

The man threatened her and, afraid he would hurt her further, she felt forced her to go back to his apartment, where her raped her again a further two times. Pirvu eventually let her go when a friend of his came to the apartment. 

CCTV footage confirmed that the victim went towards the apartment with Pirvu. 

The girl ran home in a very distressed condition to her mother, who brought her to the Gardai and to a sexual assault treatment unit. The court heard she had sustained injuries to her face, back, breasts, arms, legs and genital area, including a 2mm laceration to her urethra.

Pirvu initially denied having met the victim, and then said that his solicitor had told him to deny everything. He then claimed that he and his victim had ‘consensual sex’.

In her victim impact report, the woman said she feared for her life on that “horrible night”.

“I felt like a piece of meat,” she wrote. “I tried to fight him and I tried to run away but he was much stronger, he said he was going to kill me if I didn’t do what he wanted me to do.”

She said that “something on the inside of me was broken and could never be fixed”, and that she doesn’t feel safe anymore and suffers from nightmares and panic attacks.

She said she has become very depressed and suicidal and was self-harming, telling the court that she felt that her life was no longer her own.

Judge Murphy said there was no evidence that Pirvu was aware that his victim was a vulnerable person. She suspended the final three and a half years of a ten year sentence and backdated jail time to when the rapist went into custody in August 2018.

She also criticised that language barriers meant Pirvu was not initially advised by gardaí of his right to a solicitor.

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