A MARRIED farmer was sentenced to a total of 19 years in prison for raping another man twice at a location in Limerick, but will serve just over 11 of those years.
Thomas ‘Tossy’ Nyhan (60), of Crookstown, County Cork, was sentenced to 11.5 years for raping another man in April 2019, with the final year suspended.
The married father of four received a second sentence of eight and a half years for raping the same man in January 2011.
As both sentences are to run concurrently, Mr Nyhan will only serve part of the longest sentence.
Nyhan contested two counts of anal rape, but was unanimously convicted by a jury following an 11-day trial at the Central Criminal Court, sitting in Limerick, last May.
Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring directed that the victim was entitled to his anonymity and ordered he not be identified.
The victim told the trial that the rapes were like “barbed wire” inside him. He wrote in a victim impact statement that there were “not words strong enough to capture the pain” he suffered.
“He raped me twice. This was not a moment of confusion. It was cold, calculated, and violent – he knew what he was doing – and eight years later he did it again,” the man said.
“This is what he chose. This is who he is. I trusted him and told him about my trauma and vulnerabilities and he controlled, degraded, and violated me in the most horrific way.”
He said that Nyhan spoke about his own children during one of the rapes, which the victim described as “twisted and inhumane”.
He said he disclosed the second rape to his GP in 2019, because he “could not hold the weight of his abuse any longer”. Later he told Gardaí he had also been raped by Nyhan in 2011.
The victim said he is “a ghost of the man I used to be. I am broken, alone. I have no one, because my barriers are always up.”
“He is a rapist and that will follow him for the rest of his life, and it should.”
Previously, the victim asked Ms Justice Ring to impose a sentence on Nyhan that reflected his crimes, telling her: “Let it say this matters – we matter. Please show what I lost matters. What he did matters.”
When questioned by Gardaí in May 2019, Nyhan accepted sexual activity had occurred between him and the victim, but denied raping him.
During the trial, and under cross-examination by Nyhan’s barrister Mark Nicholas, the victim agreed that he had remained in regular contact with Nyhan following the 2011 rape.
However the victim described as “lies” unfounded claims by Nyhan that he asked the farmer for money for sex.
He also described as “bulls**t” further unfounded claims by Nyhan, put to him by the barrister, that the victim had been in possession of “a knife” at the time and that Nyhan “was afraid” he’d harm himself and so “pretended to go along” with sex.
The victim told the court Nyhan threw him on the bed and “thrust” into him, telling the victim he “loved” him, despite his pleas to stop.
“It was like barbed wire,” the victim told the court, breaking down in tears. “It was like hell, like something burning you.”
Swabs taken by forensic Gardaí of a stain at the scene of the 2019 rape matched Nyhan’s DNA profile.
The judge told the court that “Nyhan said to the victim if he had sex with him he could go home and have sex with his wife. He then took the victim into a bedroom, took off his pants, and had anal intercourse.”
The judge noted that Nyhan “to all intents and purposes lived the quiet, hardworking life of a farmer”, but had acted in a “serious and sinister” fashion.
“It is clear that Nyhan knew that the victim had not told anyone of the 2011 rape, and thus he had the confidence to rape again in 2019, assuming that the victim would stay silent again,” the judge said.
In mitigation, the judge took into consideration Nyhan’s age, no previous convictions, health difficulties, and that he has been a hard-working family man.
Nyhan’s wife supported her husband in court every day of his trial.
Before he was led away to prison, members of Nyhan’s family cried, roared, and hugged him.
