An evil rapist who laughed in a Cork woman’s face and told her he was HIV positive and suffering from Hepatitis C has been jailed for nine years.
Zimbabwean born Lovemore Dube was in Ireland on a South African passport when he carried out the vicious attack in the summer of 2012.
A Central Criminal Court hearing in Cork heard that the 25-year-old had laughed in the woman’s face as he pinned her to a bed and raped her.
The Irish Times reports that the court heard he then told her that he was HIV positive and had hepatitis C.
Dube, living in Ireland since 2005, pleaded guilty to raping the woman in her home in Cork, and to the theft of house keys, on July 23rd, 2012.
Justice Paul Carney told Dube that he had abused the woman’s hospitality by returning to rape her when she was alone in the house less than an hour after she and her fiancé had invited him in for coffee as it was raining.
The judge said: “When he was left alone with his victim, he effected a long, gratuitously violent and gratuitously insulting rape which left the victim severely injured and severely traumatised.”
The court heard that as well as suffering physical injuries and emotional distress, the victim had to wait for several stressful days before test results came back to show she was clear of HIV and Hepatitis.
Justice Carney said the woman was entitled to ‘safety and sanctuary’ in her own home and also noted her distress when she learned that Dube had been found with her house keys.
Sentencing Dube to nine years imprisonment, with two suspended, he also sentenced him to three years for the theft of the house keys.
In her victim impact statement, the woman said she feared that Dube was going to kill her when, after biting her on her breasts, he put his hands on her neck and began to choke her as he raped her in the bedroom of her house.
She said: “I couldn’t breathe as I was being strangled and I thought I was going to die. I didn’t want to die like this and I thought his face would be the last thing I would ever see in this life. I felt I was seconds from death and I couldn’t do anything about it.
“I thought I would never see my lovely family again and never see the love of my life again. I dreaded my family finding me dead like this and worried about the trauma they would go through.
“I prayed to God, Our Lady, the angels and my late grandmother to save me.
“His eyes looked evil and they bored into me and he seemed to enjoy my suffering as he kept laughing. I felt humiliated, powerless, and his smell repulsed me.”
The victim also revealed how Dube slapped her and called her ‘a bitch’ and ‘a slut’ during the rape.
She added in the statement how she managed to get enough breath to ask him how he would feel if somebody did that to his mother or sister and she managed to distract him and get him off and push him out of the house and lock him out.
The victim said: “My relief was short-lived as he then started screaming outside the house that he was going to smash in the front window and finish me off like he should have. I was again terrified for my life and felt all alone and helpless.
“Every time I read or hear about a woman who has been raped and murdered, I know the terror they have gone through and I relive the vicious rape again.
“I used to be a happy, carefree, trusting person before the rape. I don’t know if I will ever be that person again.”
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