Raymond Shorten: Taxi driver rapist shares prison sentence with notorious sex offenders and murderers

Gerard Barry, David Masterson, Philip Colgan and Mark Nash are now among the neighbours of the disgraced taxi driver who was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Thursday for raping two female passengers, after previously being sentenced to 13 years for raping a seven-year-old girl.

“Shorten is exactly where he belongs now,” a source told Sunday World.

“He’s one of the worst of the worst… And to be honest, they’re probably the only ones who would take him in.”

“If the guys in the general population ever got their hands on him, they would take him down. I have no doubt about that.”

Vile Shorten’s closest neighbour on the landing is 44-year-old Gerard Barry.

The double murderer and serial rapist from Rahoon, Galway, has been serving a life sentence for 15 years for the rape and murder of Swiss student Manuela Riedo in October 2007.

Barry is also serving two life sentences imposed on him in 2009 for the rape of a French student seven weeks before Ms Riedo was killed.

It is unlikely that he will ever be released from prison.

Further down on the landing sits the perverted child molester David Masterson.

Masterson, from Tallaght, Dublin, is serving a 17-year prison sentence for the sexual abuse of his own daughter.

The 58-year-old sent text messages to his daughter disguised as another person and asked her to perform sexual acts with men.

When the victim showed the messages to her father, he told her that she had to do these things because his job was in danger.

The Central Criminal Court heard that Masterson subsequently abused three girls, had sexual encounters with two teenagers and entered into a sexual relationship with a third who lived with him for a time.

At the time of his conviction in 2021, Masterson was already serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence in Midlands Prison in Portlaoise for the offences of desecration.

The court heard he had 17 previous convictions, including for child molestation and possession and distribution of child pornography.

Another inmate on the landing is double rapist and murderer Philip Colgan.

The 51-year-old was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2000 for the murder of Layla Brennan, whose body he had disposed of in the Wicklow Mountains.

Colgan has already served eight years in prison for the serious double rape of a 79-year-old woman and a young Spanish student.

He had been at large for just over a year when he murdered Ms Brennan.

G3 is also home to the notorious serial killer Mark Nash.

In 2015, Nash was found guilty of the murder of two Dublin women, Sylvia Sheils (59) and Mary Callanan (61), whose mutilated bodies were found in a residential care facility in Grangegorman in March 1997.

At this time, Nash was already serving a life sentence for the murders of Catherine and Carl Doyle in Roscommon in mid-August 1997.

Notorious criminal and child molester Stephen “Rossi” Walsh was also housed in G3 until recently, before being transferred to C Wing as punishment after he was caught with other inmates’ books in his cell.

According to sources, it is likely that he will return to the G3 group in the near future.

As Judge Paul McDermott sentenced Shorten, who now works as a money launderer in prison, to spend the next 30 years of his life in hell on Thursday, he said he had exploited his victims and thereby “absolutely abused” the trust placed in him to bring the passengers home safely.

The judge imposed a 17-year prison sentence for the rape of the women, following a 13-year sentence he received earlier in the week for the unrelated rape of a seven-year-old girl.

The father of seven, of Melrose Crescent, Clondalkin, Dublin, had pleaded not guilty to raping the woman during dates in 2022 but was found guilty by a jury.

The court found that there were few mitigating circumstances.

“He does not acknowledge his guilt and shows neither remorse nor remorse for his actions,” the judge said.

He shows “no remorse whatsoever for the harm he has caused to these women.”

“He claims he did nothing wrong,” the judge said, and it is clear that Shorten “was and remains a danger to others.”

During the trial, a jury heard that Shorten raped the first woman (19) on June 26, 2022.

She had drunk five pints of cider, which she was not used to, and was separated from her friends.

She woke up in the front seat of his taxi feeling “numb.” He stopped the taxi and put her in the back seat, where he raped her while she repeatedly lost consciousness.

He dropped her off near her house after the attack.

Shorten was later identified on CCTV footage showing his taxi making two U-turns and then stopping next to the woman who had failed to flag him down.

He attacked the second woman (20) less than two months later, on August 9, 2022.

This woman had decided to take a taxi home because she was tired and drunk after a night out downtown.

She fell asleep in the back seat of Shorten’s taxi and the next thing she remembers is waking up to him raping her.

She said she was in shock and didn’t know how to defend herself. When he took her home, he demanded the fare of 70 euros.

The victims said Shorten was a “predator” and what should have been their “safest option” to get home after a night of drinking had become their “worst nightmare”.

Shorten claimed he had consensual sex with the women, at their instigation.

On Monday, Shorten was sentenced to prison for the rape and sexual assault of a girl in 2012.

In the days following her mother’s funeral, he raped her for the first time in a bathroom in her family home.

She was seven or eight when the second rape occurred.

Shorten, who was known to the girl’s family, later abused her in a car by inappropriately touching her leg.

He denied any wrongdoing and claimed the complaints were “complete fabrications.”

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre strongly welcomed the length of the sentence imposed on Shorten.

“The verdict should not only be welcomed by the victims of sexual violence, it should also send a signal of zero tolerance towards the perpetrators,” said Executive Director Rachel Morrogh.