SON OF FORMER GAA STAR IN PRISON AWAITING TRIAL FOR RAPE IN NEW YORK

Man says he was ‘blackout drunk’ during alleged incident

THE son of a well-known former GAA star is in jail and is facing firstdegree rape charges in New York.

The 28-year-old has been held in the notorious Rikers Island prison in New York since July after he was arrested and charged with raping his flatmate in Brooklyn.

According to his lawyer, the defence will claim that the man was ‘blackout drunk’ during the alleged incident and has no recollection of it.

The defence has also noted that he suffered six concussions during the course of his amateur rugby career in Ireland.

The man – who was working as a barman in New York – faces a potential 25-year term.

Bail was set at €100,000 at an initial hearing.

It is understood that his family posted bail, but the man was subse- quently placed in custody by US immigration officials because he had overstayed his visa. A court heard that the accused had no recollection of the incident because he was ‘blackout’ drunk.

His lawyer told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘He is fighting the case and expects to be fully vindicated. I won’t get into what his defence is going to be but, yes, it is a possibility that his concussions will be part of it. We haven’t made that call yet.’

The man, who is over 6ft tall and weighs more than 15 stone, played rugby for his school and club.

In the criminal complaint filed at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, the defendant’s flatmate told police that at about 4am on July 10, 2014, she woke up while he was allegedly raping her.

She said she repeatedly told him to stop but the defendant allegedly held her head down and committed another sex act on her. The New York Post reported that in a note appealing his bail situation last September, the accused’s lawyer told Brooklyn Supreme Court that the defendant went home after working in a bar and was too drunk to know what he was doing.

At an appeal of that bail denial, in the absence of the defendant, his lawyer made the case that he would be at a low risk of fleeing the United States because he was ‘basically penniless’ and would need his father’s help to leave the country.

The lawyer said that the defendant’s father had attended a previous court hearing and would not be willing to help his son flee the country.

‘His father would never do that. His father would be embarrassed, tremendously embarrassed, by harbouring a fugitive,’ the lawyer told the court, ‘although he would like nothing more than to see his son come back, because he is not happy with his son’s life here in the United States.

‘He seems to be the lost sheep of the family.’

The lawyer said the defendant’s father was a football star in the 1970s in Ireland. The judge was told that the accused’s family were ‘wellknown and well-established’ in Ireland.

The judge, however, observed: ‘Assuming that’s true, that the father wouldn’t help him, is his father speaking for every other family member?’

The defendant has spent the last seven months in Otis Bantum Correctional Centre on Rikers Island, which has a prison population of 14,000 inmates.

He is due to appear in court again on March 26.

‘His father would not harbour a fugitive’