A convicted rapist – who had only been in Ireland for a month – viciously beat and tried to rape a woman while holding her against her will in Ballinasloe town last year.
Stefan Macina (33), of no fixed abode, had arrived in Ireland from Romania one month before the attack took place on May 24, 2015.
He was staying with other Romanians in the town at the time while working in a local car wash.
Macina arrived in Ireland having just served an eight-year sentence for rape in Romania, which was imposed in 2008, and he had served various terms of imprisonment prior to that for using violence to commit thefts in 1998, 2005 and 2006.
Macina had initially denied charges of attempting to rape the 45-year- old woman, but he changed his plea to guilty moments before the trial was due to begin.
Detective Garda Adrian Fehilly told the sentence hearing yesterday that the woman left a family function at around 1am and was making her way back to her hotel when she realised she was being followed.
CCTV captured Macina walk past the woman and then turn around and follow her through St. Michael’s Square.
Macina jumped the woman from behind. He knocked her to the ground, stood on her feet to hold her down and tried to open the buttons on her jeans.
She fought him off and ran to an exit, which leads to a main road while continuously screaming for help.
The woman thought at one point that he would knock her unconscious, rape her and then throw her in the river.
Another woman in the marina area heard the victim’s cries for help and she rang the Gardaí.
Judge Rory McCabe jailed him for six years and three months for each offence, to run concurrently.
See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.