A Manchester man who is a registered sex offender will spend the next three years behind bars for repeatedly raping a woman he knew in 2004 and 2005, a Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.
The man, Shawn Irwin, 38, whose last address was Walnut Street, has been locked up since April 2005, when police say he visited the woman's workplace, rushed her from behind, pushed her across the office, and forcibly kissed her.
The woman told police after the office assault that Irwin raped her on three separate occasions between December 2004 and March 2005, according to an affidavit supporting his arrest.
Wearing jail sweats and an unkempt beard, Irwin appeared briefly in court before he was sent back to detainment for three years, which will be followed by five years of special parole.
In December, he pleaded under the Alford doctrine to a single count of sexual assault on a spouse or cohabitor.
Under Alford, a defendant does not admit guilt, but acknowledges there may be enough evidence to secure a conviction.
The woman had told police she met Irwin at a South Windsor bar on Halloween in 2004 and moved into his Walnut Street apartment some months later.
Over the course of the months that followed, the pair had a tumultuous relationship, during which he forcibly had sex with her, court documents say.
But Irwin denied the claims against him at the time, saying that the couple's sex was consensual.
He already had registered as a sex offender because of a similar case in Enfield from 2001.
In that case, Enfield police said, Irwin sexually assaulted another woman and refused to let her leave her house for 11 hours.
Irwin was held in lieu of $150,000 bond.
As part of his special parole, he must also undergo any mental health or anger management counseling deemed necessary, Judge David P. Gold said Wednesday.
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