A CONVICTED rapist has been remanded in custody for sentencing after he pleaded guilty to drug dealing offences before the Limerick Circuit Criminal Court.
Thomas O’Neill (35), of Lenihan Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, appeared before the court to affirm guilty pleas to six offences under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
Mr O’Neill admitted two counts of possessing heroin for sale or supply, as well as one count of possessing cocaine for sale or supply. He also admitted two counts of simple possession of heroin and one count of simple possession of cocaine.
Mr O’Neill was in possession of the drugs at Hyde Avenue in Limerick City, the court heard.
His barrister, Liam Carroll, said he was not seeking any probation or psychological reports, saying it was “a sentencing matter at this stage”.
Judge Colin Daly remanded Mr O’Neill, who is being held in custody at the Midlands Prison, for sentencing on November 18.
Mr O’Neill was one of four teenagers who gang-raped a woman at Cratloe Woods in County Clare on January 23, 2004.
O’Neill, along with Dean Barry and Darragh Ryan, who were all 16, and Jason Ring who was 14, carried out the sexual attack.
The four were armed with a golf club, a screw driver, a shovel, and a wheel brace when they threatened the woman and a man she was in company with at the time.
O’Neill and his accomplices ordered the pair out of their car, and the woman was struck with a golf club after she refused to give one of the gang a kiss.
The man was ordered into the boot of the car and the woman pushed onto the bonnet before she was dragged inside the car where O’Neill and the other three raped her.
The gang threatened to burn the car with the man inside it, striking him a number of times with a golf club.
Superintendent John Kerin, now retired, gave evidence at the gang’s July 2004 sentencing hearing, telling the court that the couple’s ordeal lasted for around an hour and only ended when the man escaped from the boot of the car and flagged down a passing motorist.
The gang pleaded guilty to raping the woman, who was in her 30s and falsely imprisoning the man. They also admitted assault causing harm to the couple. Between them, the four were jailed for a total of 31 years.
O’Neill, described by sentencing judge Paul Carney as the gang’s “ringleader”, was jailed for 10 years.
Dean Barry, Garryglass Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was jailed for nine years; Darragh Ryan, Lenihan Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was jailed for eight years; and Ring, of Crecora Avenue, Ballinacurra Weston, was sentenced to four years.
Dean Barry was found dead in his cell at Limerick Prison on January 2012. He had been in custody on remand at the prison on a charge of setting fire to his family home with his mother and girlfriend inside.
In 2005, a fifth member for the gang, Stephen Barry, of Roxboro Road, then aged 25, pleaded guilty to four charges arising out of the rape and was jailed for 21 years with the final year suspended.
