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A taxi man who raped three women after they hailed his cab has had a 21-year jail sentence reduced by nearly a third. The Court of Criminal Appeal today ruled that 37-year-old Owen Bermingham from Rathmines in Dublin should instead serve 15 years for his four-hour sex attack on three 20-year-old women. The original trial heard how he brought the women back to his flat in January 2003 where he raped each of them and forced them to perform sex acts on each other by threatening them with a scissors. However, Bermingham's lawyer successfully argued today that the original trial judge did not take mitigating factors into account, in particular the fact that he had been released from hospital that night following a suicide attempt.

Court reduces taxi man's rape sentence