A second teenager has been found guilty of the rape and sexual assault of a girl in a car at Limerick Racecourse on December 26th, 2022. The boy was 15 at the time, while the girl was 16.
The jury of nine women and two men spent close to 11 hours considering their verdict at a sitting of Cork Central Criminal Court before finding the youth guilty on both counts.
On Monday, a 15-year-old boy was found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting the girl on the same occasion, when he was aged 13.
A third teen was on Tuesday found not guilty of false imprisonment of the girl. However, he was found guilty of aiding and abetting the two others. He was fifteen at the time.
All three denied the charges. Each of the guilty verdicts were reached by a 10-1 majority.
Sentencings will occur at a later date.
The complainant previously told the court she met the boys for the first time when she went to Limerick racecourse with her friends.
She said she agreed to get into a car, and that the accused who was 13 took his pants down and had sex with her without her consent.
She said she told him she did not want to have sex with him. She recalled telling him “no”. She also said she told him she had her period.
After the first boy raped her, a second boy got into the back seat of the car and “did the same thing”, she said.
One of the girl’s friends said she was crying after the incident.
“She could not get out full sentences, just spatters of words. She kept talking about the car, the car, repeating herself, saying: ’The f**king [surname], I had sex with the f**king [surname]. They wouldn’t stop. I kept saying no.‘”
“She was angry. She was hitting things, screaming she wanted to die, she wanted to kill herself.”
During his closing speech for the prosecution last week, Dean Kelly SC said the boys were cackling, laughing and encouraging each other as they acted as a group in the car.
He said the three wanted the jury to believe the complainant was “a nasty, evil, mendacious liar”.
Mr Kelly said the reality was that the boys took “what they wanted from her physically and sexually whether she wanted to or not”. He said the boys acted as a single unit from the moment they got into the car.
