{"id":479468,"date":"2026-05-11T17:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/479468\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T17:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T17:00:12","slug":"man-recorded-eight-videos-of-himself-sexually-assaulting-sleeping-woman-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/479468\/","title":{"rendered":"Man recorded eight videos of himself sexually assaulting sleeping woman \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Co Wicklow<\/a> man who recorded videos of himself sexually assaulting a sleeping woman has been jailed for seven years.<\/p>\n

Philip Dignam (41) recorded eight videos depicting various acts of sexual assault on the woman while she was asleep or unconscious.<\/p>\n

Details of the videos and Dignam\u2019s comments during the assaults were provided to Judge Paul Burns during a sentence hearing at the Central Criminal Court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dignam, of Lacken, Blessington, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexually assaulting Kathleen Morris on dates unknown in 2020. The case had gone for trial four times with delays mainly relating to the providence of the video evidence.<\/p>\n

Garda<\/a> Jessica Hargadon told prosecuting counsel Anne-Marie Lawlor that Morris and Dignam were in a consensual sexual relationship and would occasionally meet at hotels.<\/p>\n

Dignam carried out the assaults while Morris slept and sent the videos to a phone previously used by the victim. Hargadon said the victim only became aware of the sexual assaults in 2022 when her then partner had cause to use this phone and saw the videos.<\/p>\n

The judge said Morris decided to end her relationship with Dignam, but \u201che was not prepared for it to end\u201d. It was clear from the recordings that Morris was asleep at the time and Dignam committed the offences for his \u201cown sexual gratification\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged the impact and said a victim impact statement from Morris showed she was \u201cextremely stressed\u201d during the hearings that occurred before the trial as she feared she would run into Dignam when he was on bail.<\/p>\n

The judge noted that Dignam told garda\u00ed during interview that Morris had consented and he had filmed her pretending to be asleep \u201cby way of role playing\u201d. He took into account that Dignam had a conviction for possession of child sexual abuse material, for which he received a one-year suspended sentence.<\/p>\n

He said Dignam went \u201cbeyond what had been consented to\u201d and committed violations when the woman was not conscious.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is remarkable that he does not seem to appreciate how utterly wrong his actions were,\u201d the judge said. \u201cHis actions were a grievous breach of trust that a sexual partner should be allowed to have in her partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that Morris was still waiting for therapy means she \u201cmay not be in a position to fully articulate the impact on her\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

The judge said the offences warranted a headline sentence of nine years. He took into account Dignam\u2019s co-operation with the Garda investigation and accepted that his late plea was of \u201csome value\u201d as it spared Morris the trauma of having to give evidence at trial.<\/p>\n

He imposed a sentence of eight years in prison and suspended the final year on strict conditions including that Dignam engage with the Probation Service for three years upon his release.<\/p>\n

Morris indicated that she wished to waive her anonymity to allow Dignam to be named in reporting of the case. She said she hoped that her doing so might encourage others to come forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Co Wicklow man who recorded videos of himself sexually assaulting a sleeping woman has been jailed for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,65264,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,946],"class_list":{"0":"post-479468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-central-criminal-court","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-wicklow"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116557016216736387","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}