A man has been jailed for 11-and-a-half years for the rape of two women four years apart.
35-year-old Daniel Okungbowa, of of Thornfield Square, Clondalkin, Dublin 22, was convicted of the two rapes carried out on sleeping women after a trial at the Central Criminal Court.
Okungbowa has a previous conviction for false imprisonment, robbery and extortion.
The Sunday World reported that Okungbowa maintained his innocence in respect of the rape which took place in 2020, but entered a guilty plea in respect of the earlier rape, which took place in 2016, only after being found guilty of the 2020 assault.
The 2016 assault on a woman now aged 31 years left the victim feeling as though she wanted to ‘rip her soul out of her body’, the court heard.
In a victim impact statement the woman said “It felt like my soul left my body the night I was raped, and I have been searching for it ever since,”.
She added that she was “expected to carry the cross of being violated. He lives his life, while I lived a life of trauma and pain,” describing how Okungbowa had pressured her not to report the rape.
She commented on the “arrogance of him” saying her attacker had displayed “a perverted sense of entitlement to my body”.
The victim had been out socialising in Dublin and had returned to a house where she had got into a bed before a man, whom she kissed consensually, joined her. Some time later she went to the bathroom and fell asleep after getting into the bed again.
She awoke to being raped by a man who identified himself as ‘Danny’. The woman asked Okungbowa “who the f**k is Danny?” before asking him if he was aware that he was raping her.
The second victim who was raped in 2020 said that she had not been herself since and wondered if she could ever stop thinking about what had been done to her.
“That person I used to be died. I am only a shell of a person. I will never be the same again,” she said, describing how she had been out socialising on the night of the attack.
Addressing Okungbowa, she said, “You should not be let out to destroy other lives,”.
The woman added that she “would like to think you were sorry for what you did and not just sorry for getting caught,” before concluding her victim impact statement by thanking the jury for “believing me”.
This woman had been out socialising and had returned to a bedsit in Dublin where she went to sleep in a double bed and was awoken to Okungbowa raping her from behind.
Defence counsel Colman Fitzgerald SC said Okungbowa was a good father and was heavily involved with the raising of his child. Letters from his wife were also handed in as character references.
Sentencing Judge Mr. Justice Kerida Naidoo said that there was little mitigation in the case of Okungbowa and that his guilty plea entered only after being found guilty had a clear strategic element to it.
He said that it was “difficult to accept” that Okungbowa’s expressions of remorse were “genuine”.
Setting a sentence of 13 years, he reduced this to an 11-and-a-half year sentence in strict conditions.