Judges hit out at barrister’s six-day grilling of raped boy
JUDGES at the Court of Appeal have criticised a lawyer representing a child rapist for taking six days to cross-examine a 12-year-old boy about allegations of his abuse by his father.
Judge Patrick McCarthy said he was ‘shocked’ by the length of t i me taken for the questioning by the barrister.
And Judge Isobel Kennedy said she found it ‘really difficult to see how you can possibly justify the length of cross-examination of a 12-year-old boy’.
Judge McCarthy added that Colman Cody SC, who conducted the cross-examination, said before he started questioning the boy that he didn’t know how long he would take. The judge said Mr Cody should have been able to make a ‘ reasonably accurate estimate’ and added: ‘That is a particularly acute problem where a child is concerned.’
Mr Cody is representing the now 70-year-old man, who is from the UK, in his appeal against his 2016 conviction for nine counts of raping his son from the age of six and one count of child cruelty for locking the boy in a box. His partner, who is also from the UK, was convicted of child cruelty but acquitted of sexual assault relating to allegations made by the boy that she had sex or simulated sex with him when he was six or seven.
Mr Cody responded to the judges’ criticisms, saying that it was a ‘particularly difficult case’.
He said he dealt with the boy in a ‘respectful and measured way’, but that it was a ‘unique case’ where the allegations against his client were ‘particularly egregious’. Judge Kennedy said the case was not ‘unique’.
The first day of the two- day appeal focused on the decision of the trial judge to allow a garda to give evidence relating to a video showing the accused, his partner and at least one other person engaging in ‘raucous’ sex acts at their home. This was, Mr Cody said, prejudicial to his client and not relevant because the video was recorded some six years before the alleged rapes.
Counsel added: ‘Whatever one’s moral view, i t was depicting consensual sexual activity.’ The decision to allow a garda to give detailed evidence of what was on the tape had, Mr Cody said, painted his client ‘in a particularly lurid and grotesque light which had the real risk of creating prejudice’.
Pauline Walley SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, pointed out that the tape was consistent with aspects of the victim’s accounts of how he was abused.
He had, she said, described how his f ather sometimes videorecorded the abuse. She also said that it showed the appellant was lying when he claimed there was never any pornographic material at his home following the birth of the victim.
Ms Walley said the evidence showed the recording was made following the birth of the boy and that the appellant and others on the video could be seen viewing pornography, while pornographic material was also visible on a table. The evidence of the video was therefore, counsel for the DPP said, probative and admissible.
The appeal continues today, presided over by court president Judge George Birmingham.
Appeal continues today