Free after sex assault in victim’s bed
A MAN who sexually assaulted a woman in her own bed has been given a suspended sentence by Judge Martin Nolan.
A court heard how 23-year-old Stephen McCarthy’s victim had gone to sleep at about 1.30am following a party and awoke later that night feeling ‘something weird’.
McCarthy was touching her and was moving in to kiss her. She screamed and jumped out of bed.
Her sister came up to the room but found no one there. She went to another room and saw McCarthy lying there but suspected he was just pretending to be asleep.
The victim outlined, in her victim impact statement, that her life had been changed forever in a way she had no control over.
She said the idea that the safest place you could be was at home in your own bed had been taken away from her. When McCarthy was arrested he initially told gardaí he had tripped, landed on top of the girl and she had started screaming.
He pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the sexual assault at a Dublin house in June 2013. He has no previous convictions.
Judge Nolan said McCarthy ‘had acted in a totally reprehensible fashion’, but suspended the two and a half year sentence. McCarthy had spent Christmas in custody.
The judge said it was ‘an uninvited assault’ and accepted that McCarthy of Esker Hills, Portlaoise, had been under the influence of drink. He said the victim had accepted €2,000 McCarthy raised as a token of remorse. Judge Nolan has been the subject of criticism on several occasions over his sentencing. In 2012, he freed car dealer Aidan Farrington, 45, who abused his two adult nieces on three occasions, saying the publication of his name was punishment enough.
The sentencing drew comparison to the treatment of food importer Paul Begley, who Judge Nolan sentenced to six years for falsely labelling garlic as apples to reduce his tax. The appeal court subsequently reduced the penalty to two years.
A year later, Judge Nolan allowed a former civil servant caught with over 7,000 images and 21 videos of child pornography avoid jail.
And last year, he allowed a man who abused his daughter for five years have his name removed from the sex offenders register after the Probation Services placed him at a low risk of re-offending.