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 slammed the government’s “broken” promises following the high-profile 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?”