Young woman raped in taxi: In court she confessed that taxi was “the safest option”

A woman who was raped by a Dublin taxi driver said at the verdict that she believed taxis were the “safest option”.

She was one of two female passengers who were raped on different days in the summer of 2022 by 50-year-old Raymond Shortenfrom Melrose Crescent in Clondalkin.

He was found guilty of raping two female passengers in the back seat of his taxi.

Shorten claimed that everything that happened with the two young women was consensual.

In her victim statement, one of the women said: said the incident had “messed up her private life” and that she still feels uncomfortable in taxis.

“A lot of men in one room is enough to make me panic,” she told the court, noting that he was still a virgin before she got into his taxi.

The young woman had not even hailed a taxi when Shorten picked her up in the early hours of June 4.th2022.

She said she had lost the ability to “feel comfortable and safe on the street” and was suffering from flashbacks.

She said it was also shocking that a “predator” like the taxi driver not only attacked her but also raped another person.

A taxi was said to be the “safest option”

The second woman, who was raped two months later, said she was always told a taxi was the “safest option” to get home at night, but instead she found herself in “every girl’s worst nightmare.”

She said that although she has tried to socialize in the taxi in the years following the attack, her “evenings usually end in tears because of what (Shorten) did to me.”

The woman said two years of her twenties were taken from her and could not be replaced.

When the verdict was announced, she stated that she suffered from anxiety and regularly had vivid nightmares.

Both girls described being drunk after a night of drinking and falling asleep over and over again.

Shorten, of Melrose Crescent in Clondalkin, Co Dublin, will be sentenced later this month.

Reporting by Frank Greaney.