A DUBLIN TAXI driver will be sentenced next month after he was convicted of the rape of two young women two years ago.
Raymond Shorten (50) of Melrose Crescent, Clondalkin, Dublin 22 was found guilty of two counts of rape and one of anal rape by a jury at the Central Criminal Court today.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts after a total of 76 minutes of deliberation. They started their deliberations on Thursday afternoon.
Shorten had pleaded not guilty to the rape and anal rape of a 19-year-old woman on 25 June, 2022 and to the rape of another woman, then aged 20, a couple of months later on 9 August.
The prosecution’s case was that each young woman found themselves in a taxi after a night out socialising in Dublin city centre where each was raped by the driver, Shorten.
He said the sexual interactions between him and each woman was consensual.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott thanked the jury for their care and attention during the six days of the trial. He excused them from jury service for five years.
He remanded Shorten in custody to be sentenced on 1 July and ordered the preparation of victim impact statements.
In her opening speech, senior prosecuting counsel Gerardine Small said it was the prosecution’s case that each woman found themselves in a taxi after a night out socialising in Dublin city centre in the summer of 2022, where they were raped in the vehicle by Shorten.
While the two women don’t know each other, there were some similarities between them and their evidence during the trial. They were close in age – the first 19 and the second 20 – when the incidents occurred in June and August 2022.
They had both been socialising and drinking on the nights in questions. They both said they found themselves in a taxi where a man raped them.
Shorten denied the allegations of rape and said he had consensual sexual contact with both women, which they initiated. They both strongly denied consenting to sex when Shorten’s account was put to them by his defence counsel.
In her evidence, the first woman said she drank five pints of cider, an amount she wasn’t used to, on the night of 25 June, 2022.
She described gaps in her memory of her journey home. She recalled waking up in the front passenger seat of a car in the early hours, with a man driving.
She said she felt very dazed and her eyes were heavy.
She said the man moved her to the back seat where he raped her anally and vaginally. She said it was very sore and she was falling in and out of consciousness.
When he finished, the man returned to the driver’s seat, then dropped her near her home.
Under cross-examination, she accepted there were issues with her memory of that night but strongly rejected the defence’s contention that she was an active participant in consensual sexual activity with Shorten.
The second woman described going for drinks in Dublin city centre on 8 August, 2022. She was due to stay with a friend, but decided to get a taxi home as she was tired and drunk.
She fell asleep in the back of a taxi and said the next thing she remembered was waking up as the taxi driver was raping her. She said she was in shock and didn’t know how to fight back.
Afterwards, he dropped her home where he asked for the fare.
She got a charger from the house as her phone had died and went back to the taxi to charge it. One of her parents later paid the fare in cash.
During her testimony, the woman became upset as she recounted returning to her house where her parents asked her questions. She said she broke down crying and told them what had happened.
Under cross-examination, she rejected the defence’s contention that there was mutual kissing, then consensual sexual activity.
Her mother said she was surprised when her daughter arrived home that night.
She said her daughter was agitated and crying after the taxi left and she noticed the zip on her jeans was down.
Her daughter told her a few minutes later that the taxi driver had raped her. The woman’s mother became visibly emotional during her testimony while she recalled replying “as in him?” She said she was shocked and thought she was going to get sick.
Shorten didn’t give evidence during the trial. Instead, two written statements he provided following his arrest on separate dates were read to the jury. He claimed the sexual activity with the women in his taxi was consensual and initiated by them.
Shorten said the first woman called him cute, then kissed him.
He said they kissed and then engaged in consensual sexual acts, before the woman got into the back of the taxi herself, where there was further consensual sexual activity. He denied there was anal sex.
He said he assumed the second woman fell asleep during the journey, but noticed she was awake when he parked the car to check her address.
Shorten claimed she leaned forward and kissed him, then they had consensual sex in the backseat.
He said the woman was smiling and kissing him while they had sex. She asked him, “was this off the bill?” He said he thought it was a joke and replied “no, it’s not” in a joking manner.
Shorten said he drove her home afterwards.
Both women were examined at a sexual assault treatment unit, and Shorten’s DNA was identified on samples taken during forensic analysis.
The taxi was identified from CCTV. It was leased by Shorten, who was the only person insured to drive it.
The white Toyota Prius had a tracker installed and GPS location data relating to the nights of 25 June 25 and 8 August was obtained by gardai.
Separate CCTV montages tracing the taxi’s movements on both nights, along with each women’s journey were shown to the jury.
The first woman could be seen walking along a Dublin street, dragging a black rubbish bag at one point. The taxi did several U-turns on the road, then stopped beside her. The woman got in, then the taxi drove away.
The CCTV also showed the taxi parked at the side of a busy road, before the second woman approaches, speaks to Shorten and then gets in.
The taxi is seen stopped for around seven minutes at the location where the rape of this woman took place. Shorten gets out of the car, then gets into the rear passenger side.
Just over six minutes later, he gets out again and returns to the driver’s seat.
The taxi is also seen on CCTV leaving the woman’s home town, then making its way back into Dublin city on 9 August. Shorten stops at a drive-through restaurant, then makes his way home.
The taxi was seized and searched several days after the second incident.
Messages of a sexual nature between Shorten and a number of other women were found on his phone following analysis.
Defence evidence was given by three women who said they had consensual sex with Shorten on other occasions in the back of his taxi. They said they had been on nights out and drinking, when they got into a taxi driven by Shorten.
One of these women said she wouldn’t have had sex with him if she had been sober because he was double her age and she didn’t find him attractive.
In her closing speech, Small suggested there is an “inherent unlikelihood” that two young women would make similar allegations about the same man within a relatively short period of time.
She submitted that Shorten’s account was “ludicrous” and a “farce”.
Small said Shorten’s job as a licenced public service vehicle driver was to get each woman safely home, but he instead “preyed” on their vulnerabilities, including their level of intoxication and tiredness.
Lorcan Staines SC, defending, told the jury this case was not about morals or the appropriateness of his client’s behaviour and that they must put aside any sympathy to decide the case dispassionately.
He told them if they accepted Shorten’s account was reasonably possible, they must give him the benefit of the doubt.
But it appears that the jury did not accept Shorten’s version of events, as they convicted on all three counts after 76 minutes of deliberation.
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