Five members of a Dublin criminal gang will serve prison terms between three and eight-and-a-half years for an assault where the victim was waterboarded, beaten with an iron bar, threatened with being raped using a stick and branded with the word “RAT” on his face and torso.
Judge Karen O’Connor, sitting with Judge Sarah Berkeley and Judge Fiona Lydon, said the facts of the case were “shocking” and involved the use of several weapons designed to inflict injury and terror on the victim. She said the court had difficulty describing what had happened, as words like “dreadful, horrendous and frightening are not sufficient to describe the horror“.
The branding marks on the victim’s face…