A MAN WHO was the ringleader of a gang that abducted an innocent man in 2011 and threatened to cut off his penis because they wrongly believed he was a sex offender has been jailed for two and a half years.

Morgan Doran (25) was one of four men who told the man he would be brought to the mountains and have his “face slashed” and “his dick cut off”.

A girl known to the men had been sexually assaulted in a nearby flat complex and the men told the victim they believed he was the culprit.

The man continually denied the sexual assault and told his kidnappers they had the wrong man. The men bundled him into a car to take him to the woman so she could confirm they had her attacker.

During this car journey they punched him around the head and continued to threaten him and call him a pervert. When the girl saw the victim she said was couldn’t be sure he was her attacker.

‘Ringleader’ 

Doran of Rathmines Avenue, Rathmines, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in March 2012 to false imprisonment of a man in Rathmines, Dublin on 16 February 2011. In May 2012, he failed to show up for a sentence hearing and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest.

Doran had gone to the UK. He was arrested there last May and returned to Ireland to face sentencing. Three others have already been sentenced for their part in the abduction.

Judge Martin Nolan said it was an extremely wrong thing to do, even if Doran had the right man. The judge said nobody except the gardaí had the power to arrest someone.

The judge imposed a five-year term with the final two and a half years suspended. He said it seemed to him that Doran was the “ringleader or at least the moving party” in the offence.

Detective Garda Ciaran McGovern told Caroline Cummings BL, prosecuting, on the date in question the teenage victim was surrounded by four young men. Doran accused him of assaulting a girl on the same road and began pulling at him.

The victim fell to the ground and Doran told the others to kick the victim. The victim fell into the foetal position to protect himself.

The men then began pushing and pulling him along the road towards a parked car. The victim held onto a tree to try to stop the abduction and he begged a passing pedestrian to call gardaí.

Some people who witnessed the scene called gardaí, the court heard.

Torture 

The victim said he told the men he wasn’t the person who had attacked the girl, but the men said he was a pervert and pushed him into a car.

They told him they were taking him to see the girl and that if she identified him they were going to slash his face.

The court heard the accused told the victim they would “cut his dick off” and the others said they would drive him up into the mountains and torture him.

The victim told gardaí he was driven to a bus stop where a girl said she couldn’t be sure if the victim was the same man who had attacked her.

Doran then went off with the girl and when he came back he said she was “99% sure” the victim was the man they were looking for. The victim told gardaí the others began “whooping and hollering as if they were looking forward to the beating”.

The victim again denied he had anything to do with the attack on the girl and he was told: “Lying is going to make it worse.”

The men then began hitting him around the head while he was in the car before releasing him.

John Fitzgerald BL, defending, said his client was very remorseful and wanted the garda to convey his shame and regret for the attack. He said he was a different man to the person who committed the offence five years ago.

David Winston (23) of Rathmines Close, Rathmines and James Farrell (23) of Rathmines Avenue were previously given suspended sentences of five years for their part in the abduction.

In 2012, a then 17-year-old – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was given a three-year suspended sentence.

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