Man (50) is acquitted of sexual assaulting girl after trial
CIARA GALVIN REPORTS FROM SLIGO CIRCUIT COURT TRIAL OF MAN CHARGED WITH TWO COUNTS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT ON A 16-YEAR-OLD GIRL IN 2016/17
A jury at Sligo Circuit Court has found a 50-year-old man not guilty of sexual assaulting a 16-year-old girl on two occasions following a three-day trial.
The jury of five women and seven men took two hours and 25 minutes to find the man not guilty by majority verdict on two counts of sexual assault.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded not guilty to sexual assault on a date unknown between November 1st, 2016 and December 6 th, 2016, and not guilty to a second charge of sexual assault on January 12 th, 2017.
This was the second time the man stood trial after a jury could not reach a majority verdict last November.
On the first day of the trial the jury was told by the complainant she was approximately six or seven years old when the defendant started a relationship with her mother.
Asked by state prosecution barrister Mr Leo Mulrooney (instructed by State solicitor Ms Elisa McHugh) if she got on with her mother’s partner, the now 19-year-old woman told the court she was ‘never really close’ to the defendant.
She added that she always felt uncomfortable around him and outlined two occasions that stood out in her mind.
The first, she told the court, was when she was 13 years old and the defendant came into her room and asked if she ever thought about sex or if she masturbated.
The woman said she was embarrassed and said ‘ No’, and the defendant said she should [masturbate] because it ‘felt good’.
“He told me if I was curious he could show me his,” the woman said he did not say what he could show her but she understood it to mean his penis.
When this incident was put to him on the second day of the trial by Mr Mulrooney, the defendant said he ‘absolutely’ denied the conversation had taken place. He told the court he and the complainant did not ‘communicate that well’.
“It’s very unlikely that conversation took place. I wouldn’t have that conversation with anybody, let alone a child.”
The complainant also outlined a second occasion she felt uncomfortable when she claimed the defendant came into a changing room with her while she tried on clothes on a family holiday to Dublin in 2013.
In his evidence, the defendant denied he had accompanied her shopping and said he had stayed with his son while his partner accompanied the complainant shopping.
In her evidence on the second day of the trial, the mother of the complainant told the court she had stayed with her son while her then partner had gone shopping with the complainant.
Giving her evidence in relation to the first alleged offence, the complainant said she and the defendant watched ‘Brooklyn’ on Netflix. Her mother was at work and her younger sibling was in bed. She said the defendant was sitting on the right side of the couch and she sat on the left and he asked her to lie down beside him.
She told the defendant she preferred to sit up but eventually agreed and lay beside him. She claimed the defendant rubbed his hand up and down under her top, from her waistband up eventually towards the bottom of her breasts, touching the bottom of one of them.
She said she got up and went to the bathroom and when she returned to the room he apologised and asked her to sit beside him again. She said no a number of times but sat beside him and he put his arm around her and her head was on his chest.
It was also the complainant’s evidence that the defendant had bought her two cans of Smirnoff Ice and she drank one of them. She said the man got annoyed at her because she didn’t want to drink the other can.
Asked if the drink had an affect on her, the complainant said it did not.
The complainant said the defendant went out to take a call from her mother and returned a time later and again asked her to sit beside him a number of times.
She said he ‘snapped’ and said, ‘We never do anything nice together, can you not just do this for me’, and she then put her head on his lap.
She told the court when she was going to bed he asked her for a ‘good night kiss’ and she pecked him on the lips and he said, ‘I meant a proper one’.
It was put to the woman by Mr Colm Smyth, SC, for the defence, instructed by Mr Seamus Monaghan solicitor, along with Mr Keith O’Grady, BL that it would be ‘extraordinary’ to suggest she would lie beside the defendant considering their fragile relationship.
The woman said she felt she could not say no when asked to lie beside him. It was also put to her that the incident never happened, and that due to his client’s back pain he always sat on a particular part of the couch to relieve this. She replied, “No, it did happen.” Giving evidence in relation to the second alleged assault on January 12, 2017, the woman told the court she got up for school that morning and it had been snowing.
She said the defendant texted her to ‘come up’ and she went upstairs to his bedroom and he asked her if she wanted the day off school and she said she did. He asked her to get into the bed and after refusing a number of times she got into the bed.
She said they were facing each other and the defendant had his hands around her moving his hands up and down her back and underneath her underwear touching her buttocks.
She said he asked her to take her top off and she said no and when she moved to get out of the bed he grabbed her wrist and apologised.
She lay back down on his chest for a few minutes. She said he took a call from her mother while she was there and when he got out of the bed to get ready for work she realised he had been naked.
Asked how long she was in the bed for, the complainant said 20 minutes, but said she could not be precise.
In cross examination, Mr Smyth put it to the complainant that she did not like the accused ‘from the beginning’, to which she replied, “I never felt comfortable with him. I never really bonded with him. I didn’t like him, but I didn’t resent him.”
She agreed she did not like talking to him, however, when it was put to her she wanted him out of her life, she replied, “I didn’t really like him, but he was still a part of my family.”
When questioned about the conversation in her bedroom in 2013, the complainant said it made her feel uncomfortable but she did not find it disturbing at the time.
Questioned about the length of time she was in bed with the defendant on the morning of January 12 th, the complainant said 20 minutes.
Mr Smyth put it to her that during the previous trial she had said 25 to 30 minutes.
Mr Smyth said his client received a call from his partner at approximately 8.10am and at 8.25 his Google records showed he was checking Met Eireann on his phone.
“There would not have been time to do all the things you said were done,” - Mr Smyth.
“It did happen, everything I said was true,” the complainant replied. It was put to her that she knew of tensions in the air between her mother and the defendant and she used it.
On day two of the trial the mother of the complainant gave evidence that on the morning of January 12 th, 2017 she rang the defendant at 7.57am and again at 8.16am, the first call lasted over seven minutes and the second call lasted one minute.
In relation to the evidence given of the shopping trip in Dublin in 2013, the woman said the defendant and complainant went shopping, while she waited with her son in a play area.
Taking the stand, the defendant said as the years went on there was very little communication between him and the complainant and when he and his then wife would hold hands walking, the complainant would try to push between them.
Asked by Mr Smyth of his recollection of the 2013 shopping trip, he said he stayed with his son and spent a lot of time in a Disney shop while the complainant and her mother were shopping.
In relation to the first allegation, the man said he had been under pressure from his then wife to make an effort with the complainant so he suggested they watch a film.
He said he did not touch the complainant and he never bought her alcohol as he did not agree with it.
Asked if he invited her into bed on January 12 th, 2017, the man said, “That didn’t happen.”
He told the court he suffered from sciatica and it takes him a long time to get out of bed and that is why he texted the complainant on the morning in question to come upstairs.
He said the complainant had already left the room at 8.16am when he took the second call.
Answering questions about tensions in the house, the defendant said he and the complainant’s mother were arguing a lot in relation to a personal matter.
He told Mr Mulrooney the complainant could not but have heard them arguing in the lead up to Christmas of 2016.
Mr Mulrooney put it to the defendant that the complainant did not know about the personal matter her mother and he were fighting over at that time and questioned how then was she taking advantage of the situation as previously suggested by the defence.
Asked by Mr Mulrooney if it was a source of embarrassment that he had to admit before a jury that he invited a teenager into his bedroom while he was naked in bed, the defendant said the duvet was up to his neck and the complainant would not have seen he was naked.
Asked if the opportunity to fondle the complainant was there on the day, the defendant denied this.
“I did not have the opportunity, it wouldn’t happen.”
Mr Mulrooney accepted the defendant denied this, but put it to him again that the opportunity was there. The defendant said, “It would never enter my head to do that.”
After two hours and 19 minutes of deliberations the jury failed to reach a verdict and Judge Francis Comerford then directed a majority verdict, with two not guilty verdicts returned minutes later.