From Galway Bay FM newsroom- A woman with a mild intellectual disability who was raped three times by a stranger after a night out in a west of Ireland town has told a court that something inside her was broken and could never be fixed.
38 year old Costel Pirvu, formerly of Loughrea, was found guilty of three counts of rape and one of false imprisonment after a nine-day trial at the Central Criminal Court last year.
At a hearing this week, the court heard that he continues to maintain his innocence.
On February 4, 2018, the woman, aged 19 at the time, had been out socialising with some friends who walked her half way home.
She told gardaí she saw a man she didn’t know looking at her and she ran, but he grabbed her and forced her against a black jeep and then to the ground, and raped her even though she struggled to escape, getting scrapes and bruises
The woman said Pirvu refused to let her go home, threatened her and forced her to go back to his apartment. She said she felt if she didn’t do what he wanted, he would hurt her.
CCTV footage showed Pirvu and the victim walking back towards his apartment, where she told gardaí he raped her a further two times and finally let her go the next morning when a friend of his walked in.
The woman said she then ran home crying and upset and told her mother, who brought her to the garda station to make a complaint and then to the Sexual Assault and Treatment Unit in Galway.
Pirvu was arrested that evening, his apartment was searched and a DNA sample taken.
He admitted meeting the woman but said she had voluntarily gone back to his house where they had had consensual sex.
The court heard that the victim doesn’t feel safe anymore and is all the time watching for who’s behind her. She can’t eat or sleep properly and suffers PTSD, nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks.
The court heard that Pirvu has three previous convictions in Romania and Germany, including for robbery, attempted rape and assault.
Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy said she had been told Pirvu got a beating while in prison but didn’t know if this was true or not, as she had not been furnished with the prison report she had requested.
She adjourned the case for a week so that she can be told when the prison report will be available and she apologised to the victim for the delay in sentencing.
