A 39-year-old former professional soccer player has been jailed for nine years after he raped a 19-year-old woman at knifepoint in her own bedroom.<\/p>\n
Over a two-hour period, he threatened to kill her and her parents, and made video recordings of the sexual assault.<\/p>\n
Brazilian Tiago Damasceno Sousa, who had played professional soccer for America Mineiro in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, had earlier pleaded guilty to the rape of the woman in her home in west Cork.<\/p>\n
He had been living in west Cork for 20 months before the rape on March 29th, 2024.<\/p>\n
On Friday, at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork, Judge Siobhan Lankford commended the victim for her quick thinking and courage in making her escape from her home. The judge also praised the clarity of her victim-impact statement.<\/p>\n
Det Garda \u00c1ine O\u2019Regan, of the Cork County Garda Protective Services Unit, previously told the court the injured party reported the rape and knifepoint threats to garda\u00ed. It happened between 7am and 9am on the date in question in her own home. Sousa, who she had never spoken to before, was the perpetrator.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe held a knife to her and raped her on numerous occasions that morning,\u201d said O\u2019Regan. \u201cShe woke to find him leaning over her in her bed at 7am. He had a knife in his right hand. He covered her mouth with his left hand. He told her to shut up or he would kill her and her mum and her dad. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was on top of her. She knew something bad was going to happen. She decided to trick him to leave her alone \u2013 she agreed to have sex the next day. But he slapped her in the face, saying, \u2018No, you are going to do it now\u2019. She agreed to give him oral sex. He was still holding the knife.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Regan said Sousa used Google translate on his phone and forced the woman to perform oral sex on him. He put his penis in her vagina a number of times from different positions and recorded some of it on his phone. While this was happening, Sousa repeatedly made death threats.<\/p>\n
The detective garda continued: \u201cWhen she said \u2018no video\u2019 to him, he told her to shut up. He slapped her on the face because he believed she was not showing pleasure . . . He kept apologising to her. He said he was studying Irish law and had proof that she was enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her victim-impact statement, the woman said the rape had a hugely traumatic impact, leading to \u201csleepless nights, constant nightmares that I still remember and still have\u201d. <\/p>\n
She added: I\u2019ve a fear of being alone. I couldn\u2019t sleep alone for a long time or without a background noise. I began going to therapy, hoping it would help my trauma, but it didn\u2019t \u2013 it was just more of a reminder. I\u2019ve [self-harmed] because it felt like his fingerprints were still there and because that would numb the pain I was feeling on the inside, but that didn\u2019t help either.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther days, I was fully convinced I should\u2019ve died that day by being stabbed and I would go into an instant panic attack from the thought. When he finally gets out of prison, he will be able to get on with his life, but this will stick with me forever and will always be in the back of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge said she shared the DPP\u2019s view that the offence merited a headline sentence of between 10 and 15 years due to the many aggravating factors in the case, including the fact Sousa used a knife, the rape happened in the woman\u2019s home, he filmed it and it went on for two hours.<\/p>\n
It was confirmed that he had consumed a significant amount of alcohol. Mitigating factors included the guilty plea, which came late but saved the victim from having to give evidence. He also had no previous convictions.<\/p>\n
The judge said she would reduce the headline sentence of 12 years to 10 years because of the guilty plea. She further reduced it to nine years because of Sousa\u2019s previous good character and the fact that as a foreign national with no English and no family support here, he would find prison life difficult.<\/p>\n
She backdated the sentence to March 29th, 2024, when Sousa first went into custody. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 39-year-old former professional soccer player has been jailed for nine years after he raped a 19-year-old woman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-320550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}