BY RONAN McSHERRY
WHEN Eamon Foley was convicted of the heinous rape of 91-year-old Mary-Anne McLaughlin in 1999 trial judge Mr Justice Higgins said, "It is clear that the perpetrator of this assault remains a significant risk to women."
Foley, 47, from Dreenan Road, Castlederg, was sentenced to 16 years in prison and placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for life after being found guilty by a jury at Enniskillen Crown Court in May 2001. He is due to be released next month after serving half his sentence.
Foley strenuously denied raping the pensioner in January 1999. Ms McLaughlin died four weeks later in hospital. The judge also noted that, "The assault on her hastened her death."
The sexual deviant carried out the rape at the frail pensioner's mobile home in Castlederg. A huge operation was mounted to find her assailant. It involved the RUC and Gardai mounting a DNA testing exercise that extended to some 600 males aged between 17-70 over a two mile radius from the mobile home. Ms McLaughlin lived one mile from the border.
Foley was detected through his DNA sample and it was this forensic evidence which led to his conviction. At his trial in 2001, a forensic expert said the odds against the DNA found on the victim belonging to anyone else were a billion to one.
Foley claimed that at the time of the offence he was on his way to Belfast having driven there from Ramelton where he had gone the previous night. However the jury at his trail was satisfied he raped Ms McLaughlin some time between 2.30 and 3.30 that morning, having broken into her mobile home where she preferred to live, despite her age. Neighbours who cared for her found her later that morning about 7.45.
Mr Justice Higgins in his summing up at the trial placed emphasis on the fact that the elderly victim had been left alone, scared and distressed.
Foley lost a subsequent appeal against his sentence at the Court of Appeal in Belfast.
He claimed that all the agencies involved in the investigation and trial had conspired to frame him for the rape. Dismissing his appeal, Lord Chief Justice Brian Kerr told the court that none of the increasingly outlandish claims made by Foley had been supported by evidence or analysis of the material presented on his behalf.
"He has had the temerity to question whether Ms McLaughlin had been raped at all," he said. "He has invited this court to conclude that he was the victim of an outrageous conspiracy whose participants ranged from his own legal teams, experts engaged on his behalf, the trial judge, the prosecution, the police witnesses, the forensic science agency and many others.
"It is entirely clear that they were presented in an increasingly desperate attempt to divert attention from the central indisputable fact that his DNA was found in the body of his unfortunate victim."
An experienced consultant forensic psychiatrist found no evidence to indicate that Foley was suffering from an active mental illness at the time he carried out the rape nor was he intoxicated to such an extent that he might not have been conscious that what he was doing was wrong.
