Welsh Man Gets Life For Repeatedly Raping Woman, Her Teen Daughter Days After Prison Release

A career criminal in Wales faces a life in prison after breaking into a woman's home in March and repeatedly raping her and her teenage daughter while the police were on their way.

Joshua Thomas Carney, 28, was sentenced to life in prison on Monday after pleading guilty to one count of assault, one count of assault with intent of committing a sexual offense, five counts of rape, two counts of sexual assault and one count of theft, according to a press release from the South Wales Police Department. (Under U.K. law, rape is any non-consensual penetrative sexual act committed with an offender's genitals, and sexual assault is any non-consensual sexual touching.) He must serve a minimum of 10 years.

"Your offending on that day was horrific. It was the stuff of nightmares," Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke said at his sentencing, according to Wales Online. "The consequences for your victims are obviously life-changing and exceptionally traumatic. Your offense is so serious that a sentence of life imprisonment is required and that is the sentence I impose."

The judge also referred to the 28-year-old's "long history of offending" when imposing the sentence. Prosecutors had told the court that he'd racked up 23 convictions for 47 prior offenses — mostly burglaries — through 2017, after which he was jailed for the final series of burglaries. He served half of his eight-year sentence in those cases, according to Nation Cymru, and was released with supervision on Feb. 25.

At 6:45 a.m. on March 1, Carney — who eventually said he was high on "spice," the street name for synthetic cannabinoids — knocked on the door of the woman's home and attempted to gain entry by trying the handle and the postal slot before walking around the yard, according to Wales Online. His actions alerted the woman, who was getting ready for work as her daughter slept. When she stepped outside to look, she saw a high, disheveled and barefoot Carney along the side of the house.

"Excuse me, love, can you phone a taxi for me?" he said to her, according to ITV News. As she attempted to run back inside, he followed her, pushed her through the door and locked it behind him.

He then asked her who else was home and if she had a boyfriend. In an effort to keep him away from her teen daughter upstairs, she attempted to convince him to remain on the first floor.

He responded by punching her repeatedly in the head, causing her to scream and wake the 14-year-old girl, according to Wales Online.

"Stop f---ing screaming or I'm going to stab you," he told the woman, after which he dragged her into the living room, forced her to take her clothes off and orally raped her while demanding, "Tell me I'm your husband."

Upstairs, the teen girl locked her bedroom door and called police from her cellphone at 6:52 a.m. 

"I can't see her, I can hear her crying, I think he's stabbed her," the girl told the dispatcher of her mother.

Downstairs, Carney told his first victim, "Come on, let's go upstairs," and she again begged him to leave her daughter alone. She managed to break free and run to the front door, but was unable to unlock it before Carney reached her, punched her again and said "Do that again and I will f---ing stab you."

Upstairs, she led him to her own bedroom instead of her daughter's, where he pushed her on the bed and orally raped her a second time. Apparently unsatisfied, he once again demanded to go to her daughter's room, according to Wales Online.

"Get your daughter. Which room is your daughter in?" he demanded.

His first victim replied, "Do whatever you want to me but please leave her alone."

Instead, he dragged her to her daughter's door and threatened to stab both of them unless the girl unlocked it, which her mother told her to do.

The naked Carney — who grabbed the girl's phone and realized she'd already called the police — then dragged both victims back to the mother's room where he slapped the teenage girl and forced her to watch as he orally raped her mother a third time.

Then, he turned his attention to the teenager and began to vaginally rape her.

"Watch me, look what I am doing to her," he ordered the woman, who held her daughter's hand through the ordeal, according to the BBC.

As he raped the teenager, he repeated the same invocation he'd made to her mother during his initial assault: "I'm your husband, tell me I'm your husband," according to Wales Online.

He stopped briefly, then raped the teenager a second time in front of her mother, only then declaring "There, I finished," according to the outlet.

But when Carney returned to the first floor of the home to retrieve his clothes — just 15 minutes after he began his brutal attack on the family — the police were outside. Scared that he might take them hostage, the woman led him out the backdoor where they were confronted by police.

"Please take him, I beg you, he's raped us both," she mouthed to the police. Carney was arrested on the spot.

Still visibly under the influence, he was taken to the hospital where he first denied any memory of the attack. But later, while in police custody, he said of his victims, "Those f---ing little sluts probably called me into their house," according to The Sun.

Later, he demanded that his victims be given forensic rape exams, telling police, "When will the swabs be coming back because my memory is starting to come back? I'm innocent so obviously it's going to be proved."

The women did, in fact, have forensic rape exams and the swabs showed Carney was the perpetrator.

He eventually agreed to plead guilty.

In victim's impact statements made during the sentencing, both mother and daughter expressed that they had ongoing psychological trauma from the attacks, but were still on a waiting list to receive counseling services, according to Wales Online.

"I have excessive feelings of guilt towards my daughter because a parent's job is to protect their children and I was unable to do that and I let her down," her mother told the court according to the outlet. "I don't think I will ever erase from my memory the images of what he did to her and what he forced me to watch him doing. She's an innocent girl and he stole her virginity from her in such a brutal way."

The daughter's statement was read on her behalf in court.

"Because I am extremely young this attack has affected the rest of my life," she wrote, according to Wales Online. "I have really bad trust issues with men."

"I have lost all trust in people, I have lost all trust in males in particular," she added, according to the BBC. "I would always give my dad a hug and a kiss — I don't feel I can do that any more, I feel disgusted."

Carney did not speak at the hearing, but his barrister addressed the court.

"The defendant is disgusted by the terrible crime he has committed," Christopher Rees said, according to the South Wales Argus. “He wakes up every day wanting to kill himself.”