Craig Dorney, 35, originally from Cork, was jailed for seven years for raping a woman while she helped him get home after she found him drunkenly passed out in a taxi.
In front of Dorney at his sentencing hearing on Thursday (December 12) she described how she was once confident, joyful and always trying to help others, but she now feels she is constantly looking over her shoulder.
“That night all I was trying to do was to help someone, now I don’t think I’ll ever get that back,” she said.
“I felt like my soul was broken. The intrinsic parts of what made me were snapped forever. There is such an overwhelming sense of not being the same again.”
She told Dorney he also took from her love of London and her ability to enjoy intimacy with the man she loves.
But addressing her attacker directly, she said: “In almost ruining my own life, you’ve ruined your own. I hope no one I love has to go through the same pain I have been. A pain that will never heal.”
She was on her way home in the early hours of June 29 when a taxi driver beckoned her over to help with a drunk man in the back of his cab, Woolwich Crown Court previously heard.
After rousing Dorney by splashing water on his face she and the taxi driver established where he lived and she offered to get him home.
As she did so Dorney isolated her in an alley where he sexually assaulted and raped her.
Dorney denied accusations of rape, sexual assault and assault by penetration from the moment they were made, telling police the following day a “random female” had tried to kiss him on his way home but he said no as he has a girlfriend.
But since he was found guilty of all three charges by a jury last Friday (December 6) Dorney said “reality had rung true” and he now accepts carrying out the attack.
At his sentencing hearing it was said on his behalf that he now shows “genuine and heartfelt remorse”.
His refusal to admit his behaviour earlier caused the woman the agony of a week-long criminal trial.
She said after having his barrister look her directly in the eye and say “you’re saying you were raped, that didn’t happen” she can understand why so many women feel they cannot go through the court process.
Shortly before the trial began the woman was caused even more stress and fear upon being told that Dorney had gone missing.
He had been released on bail prior to the trial, but before his GPS-monitoring tag was fitted Dorney absconded from his home address.
He was missing for weeks before he eventually handed himself in to Lewisham Police Station following a media appeal.
She said she believed Dorney’s drinking was the cause of what happened that night.
After sentencing Dorney to seven years in prison with an additional two months for going missing while on court bail, Judge Downing commended the woman for the courage she showed and said “one hopes that does act like a healer”.
Dorney will serve at least two thirds of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.
Once he is released he will spend the rest of his life on the sex offender’s register.
