In a historic case, the Dublin Central Court has today handed down a ten year sentence to a man found guilty of raping his wife.

According to The Independent, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy described the incidences as “cowardly” and “brutal”. “The crime of rape is an attack upon the bodily and psychological integrity of a woman,” she said. The 42-year-old man is only the third person to be convicted of marital rape since rape within a marriage was made illegal in 1990. The court heard how the victim’s ordeal began in 2014 when she requested a separation from her husband. According to reports, the marriage had been under strain as the woman’s then husband was jealous of her success and angered by her parenting techniques. The court heard that the man refused to accept the separation and began behaving with extreme violence. On one occurrence, the victim returned home to find the man had poured petrol over their living room where he smoked cigarettes as their child slept upstairs. On the 25^th of May, 2014, the man threatened the victim with a knife in her home and insisted she go upstairs where he committed the rape.  According to reports, as he raped the victim, he insisted the couple would not separate. The following day, the woman went to the family court to obtain a barring order. In the weeks that followed she realized her former husband was tracking her phone and location. On August 6^th he arrived at the victim’s parents house. He said he had a present for their son in his car but returned with a hammer. He attacked both his ex-wife and her mother until a passer-by intervened. The defence, Padraig Dwyer said his client will find prison very difficult as a foreign national who is far away from his family. The victim read a powerful victim statement in the court. "I knew that night there was nothing I could do to stop him," she read. "The rape left me with a complete sense of powerlessness , like everything of myself had been taken away from me," she continued, “I felt so broken and for a long time, angry with myself for what I saw as letting it happen.” During the attack, she feared her son would witness his father murder her. "I will never forget, before I went unconscious, looking down at the door of the room where (my son) was sleeping and thinking, 'Whatever happens now, don't come out, don't see this," she said.