TWO French men have been jailed for 25 years each after viciously raping an Irish tourist in southeast France.
Childhood friends Pedro Miguel Goncalves Rodrigues and Rafael Rodrigue Torres, both 30, were convicted of luring the woman from a bar in the French Riviera town of Menton – just a short walk from the border with Italy – before attacking her in September 2016.
According to a report in the Irish Times, the pair were described at a court in Nice as "good fathers, husbands and workers" and had no previous police records.
The trial heard that the 35-year-old victim was on holiday when she met the men in a bar, before they plied her with drink and took her back to a 4x4 car.
They then drove her to an industrial area nearby, where she was raped and suffered "torture and acts of barbarism" in the back seat of the vehicle.
The Irish woman was found bleeding and wandering the streets of Menton at 5am, with wounds so severe that she had to undergo emergency surgery.
Prosecutor Clotilde Ledru-Tinsault said the victim had been left physically and psychologically destroyed by the attack, adding: "She can never have children, can never work normally - her entire family is broken.
"A woman in that condition, you take care of. You don’t carry her like a bag of cement and dump her on the pavement after sadistic games."
Both men denied charges of rape combined with torture and barbarity and instead blamed each other for what happened.
Judge Didier Guissart said he was disturbed by the calm demeanour of the accused pair given the savagery of their actions.
Both were found guilty of the charges and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment each.
