Rapist set dog on female police sergeant shouting ‘bite her, bite her’  

Additional prison time for wounding offence 

A Douglas man who set his Staffordshire Bull Terrier on a female police sergeant has been handed a three-year prison sentence.

Convicted rapist James Marcus Doherty shouted at the dog: “Bite her, bite her, get her” during the incident in July last year.

The 41-year-old denied committing the offence but was found guilty of wounding the officer following a trial.

Doherty was sentenced for the offence at Douglas Courthouse this week at the same time as receiving a 16-year custodial sentence for the rape of a teenage girl in 2022 which he’d also denied.

The court heard police had attended his property, on Murrays Road, on the evening of 17 July 2023 to arrest Doherty for a string of driving offences.

Despite being a disqualified driver he’d been seen crashing a Ford Focus on the Creg-ny-Baa Back Road earlier that day leaving his passenger trapped in the vehicle, upside down, in a field.

Officers found him naked in the communal hallway of the property and when they tried to detain him he became ‘extremely physically resistant’; PAVA spray had to be used.

Doherty then set his dog on the police sergeant who suffered a bite to her upper thigh; she required hospital treatment including antibiotics.

In a victim impact statement, which was read to the court, the officer said she’d become fearful of dogs as a result of what had happened adding: “This whole incident has left me feeling upset.”

She also noted the reaction of her son saying: “He was upset this had happened to me at work and asked me to change my job.”

At the time of committing the wounding offence Doherty, who has 41 convictions for 110 previous offences, was on police bail for the rape allegation which he was later convicted of.

You can find the full details HERE.