Dublin taxi driver, Raymond Shorten (50), has been sentenced to 30 years in jail for the rapes of two young women and the earlier rapes of a girl who was between 7 and 8-years-old at the time.
Shorten was sentenced to 17-years for two separate attacks he committed on young women who had got into his taxi on two different nights during the summer two years ago.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott said that Shorten’s actions in respect of the two women he raped were a gross betrayal of the trust society places in taxi drivers.
The victims – one aged 19 and the other 20 at the time- were under the influence of alcohol when they were raped by Shorten, who had claimed that the sexual activity was consensual.
As Gript previously reported, Shorten raped the two young women on dates in June and August 2022.
The court had heard that both of the young women had found themselves in Shorten’s taxi after separate nights out in Dublin City Centre.
One of the victims had said that after being raped, she was dropped home in the north of the city and asked to pay the fare, the court heard. She told her mother she had been raped by the taxi driver.
She told the court last week that she had fallen asleep to wake up with Shorten on top of her, stating: “I came to the realisation he was having sex with me … I didn’t want him to kiss me, I turned my head to the side.”
In response to Shorten’s claims that the sexual contact had been consensual, prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small said this was a “farce” and “ludicrous”.
The father-of-seven with an address in Melrose Crescent, Clondalkin, Dublin, had maintained his innocence in respect of all four charges of rape as well as a charge of sexual assault of the young girl, calling these accusations a “fabrication”.
For the rapes of the 7-year-old girl he was sentenced to 13-year in jail, as Gript previously reported Shorten was known to the girl’s family and raped her for the first time shortly after her mother passed away.
The second rape of the young girl took place when she was between the ages of 7 and 8 years.
Shorten also sexually assaulted the child by touching her inappropriately in a car.
In respect of the little girl, sentencing judge Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo said Shorten was “utterly lacking in compassion” and that it appeared that he “couldn’t care less” about how he had hurt the child.