Father of a victim of sexual assault rails against broken promises

The father of a young woman who was brutally sexually assaulted by a man who served just four months in prison for the crime has sharply criticized the government’s “broken” promises following the spectacular attacks on women.

In 2012, convicted sex offender and multi-millionaire airline boss Anthony Lyons was sentenced to six years in prison following a trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, with five and a half years of the sentence suspended.

The court heard how the father-of-four attacked his victim just yards from his Dublin home, sneaking up behind her and asking her: “Are you getting home safe?” before rugby-tackling her into a bush and attacking her.

A year before Lyons’ conviction, Fine Gael’s then justice spokesman Alan Shatter announced that his party would introduce electronic monitoring of sex offenders within a year of taking office.

But the father of the Lyons victim said at the weekend: “Now, more than a decade later, nothing has happened.”

He said, “at that time, there was also talk about minimum sentences.”

The victim’s father said: “The then Taoiseach Enda Kenny promised me a meeting with Shatter’s successor Frances Fitzgerald in 2014.”

“None of this ever happened, even after the national outcry. Does this sound familiar?”