A man who raped two girls, aged 6 and 9, after luring them from a family birthday party to a flat in Athlone has been handed down two life sentences. The Galway-born man (30), who has a history of low-level offending, had only been released from prison three days before the vicious attacks.

He pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping the girls five times on Saturday September 28th last year.

Passing sentence this afternoon, Mr. Justice Paul Carney said he found it 'too upsetting' to recite the facts heard in evidence this morning.

He said a 'feature of this case was to observe the faces of the hard boiled press corps attached to this court having difficulty listening in to the facts as they emerged'.

He said the accused man's dysfunctional background and use of drink and drugs afforded little or no mitigation.

While in the normal course he would be entitled to a 'substantial discount' for his early guilty plea, 'unfortunately for the accused, this case is too serious for his expectation in this regard to be given effect to' he added.

Mr. Justice Carney said 'for the past 20 years I've refrained from saying this is the worst case ever, because doing so has always prompted a worse case to come along the following week'.

When the sentence was imposed, Martin Giblin SC, issued an apology to the girls on behalf of his client. He told Mr. Justice Carney he had been instructed not to apologise prior to the sentence being imposed.

Afterwards the girls families hugged each other in the court room. Earlier the court heard what happened on that Saturday last September.

'Our lives have never been the same'

The girls were playing outside a family birthday party when the accused man approached and asked them if they wanted to come and play with his 6-year-old daughter who was a bit shy.

Having lured them to his ground floor flat nearby he raped the girls.

He smacked the 6-year-old in the course of the attack and threatened to harm both girls and their parents if they did not do what he asked of them.

At about 4:20pm, the girls' families became concerned about their whereabouts and called 999. They had searched the local area.

However the court heard not long after the police call, the girls were found in a disheveled state.

There was evidence that the mother of one of the girls then came across the accused who she described as having yellow, rotten teeth. She said he was looking at her horribly and ranting.

One of the children pointed him out as the 'bad man' and went on to describe what he had done. The woman immediately shouted out for assistance and the accused was detained.

The court heard there were two other men in the flat but they were passed out in a drunken state during the attack. The girls were brought to the sexual assault unit in Galway and were interviewed by child specialists.

The father of the younger girl, now aged 7, gave victim impact evidence of the choice they made to 'actively poison' their then 6-year-old daughter with anti HIV and Hepatitis drugs because they did not know if her attacker was 'clean'.

The mother of the 9-year-old girl told the court 'Our lives have never been the same'.

After the man's arrest he gradually admitted his involvement. He said he had been drinking cider and vodka, and taking Valium since 7am that day.

He told gardai he had got money from a priest on the pretence that it was for food.

Asked why he had struck the younger girl, he replied that he had a 'bad temper' and had been off his head on drink.