MAN JAILED FOR FIVE YEARS FOR ORAL RAPE OF CHILD

A WEXFORD MAN who orally raped his partner’s seven-year-old son has been jailed for five years.

The man threatened to put the child out in the rain before abusing him on a date between March 1, 2013 and September 30, 2013, the Central Criminal Court heard.

The man in his thirties, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, was found guilty by a jury of one count of oral rape at his rented home in County Wexford. He continues to protest his innocence.

Sentencing the man, Justice Paul Butler said the incident had a ‘nasty effect on the victim and his mother’. He said the young boy ‘greatly impressed’ him when describing the grave effect the abuse had on him.

The judge noted it was significant the man’s offending ‘involved only one single incident and not a history of prolonged abuse’. He noted he had just one previous conviction, for burglary.

Justice Butler handed down a seven-anda-half year sentence but suspended the final two-and-a-half years on a number of conditions, including that the man not have any contact with the victim.

Senior counsel John O’Kelly, prosecuting, previously told the court the man insisted he was never alone with the boy and had never expressed remorse.

The trial was shown a video of the boy being interviewed by specialist gardaí in March 2014. He was eight at the time of the interview.

He said on the tape that his mother had left him with her then boyfriend in his home because she had to go to the shop.

In the mother’s victim impact statement, read out by Mr O’Kelly, the mother said her son had become overly emotional with no warning since the rape.

‘He’s become easily overwhelmed and distraught…He feels violated when his personal space is compromised in everyday activities,’ the mother said, adding that ‘ his right as a child to be safe and secure was taken away from him.’