A Co Galway teenager has gone on trial charged with the rape and sexual assault of a teenage girl he had been dating for a few weeks.
The now 16-year-old boy pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to four charges – three charges of sexual assault involving oral rape and one of rape of the then 13-year-old girl on dates between June and July 2023.
The incidences are alleged to have occurred in a Co Galway housing estate where both children were living with their families. The accused was 14 at the time.
Anne Rowland SC, prosecuting, told the jury in her opening address that the complainant’s mother got a Snapchat from her child on July 7th, 2023, telling her the accused had raped her.
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The message said the complainant didn’t want to go to the gardaí and said she just wanted her mother to know.
A screenshot of that message was later read out to the jury while the complainant was present via video-link.
The girl accepted she told her mother in the message that she did not realise the accused had raped her until her friends helped her realise.
She also sent her mother photographs of bruising on her legs.
The complainant agreed with Ms Rowland that the accused caused some of this bruising by pinching her.
A video of an interview the girl had with specialist gardaí in July 2023 was played to the jury. She told gardaí that she had been “dating” the accused since June that year – about three weeks before she said he raped her.
In that interview, the girl told gardaí that the accused kept asking her for sex and she kept saying “Tomorrow, tomorrow”.
She said one day when they were in his house he got on top of her, pushed her shorts aside and shoved his penis into her vagina.
She told gardaí it happened on the Tuesday and she told her mother via Snapchat on Friday.
She told gardaí she was very upset after the rape. She said she was bleeding and felt a burning when she went to the toilet and thought she may have had a kidney infection.
Earlier in her opening speech, Ms Rowland said the complainant’s mother discussed the message with her daughter as soon she got it.
After further conversations with the complainant’s uncle, a decision was made to contact gardaí.
Ms Rowland told the jury the complainant was also examined in her local sexual assault treatment unit where it was discovered that she had bruising inside her vagina.
Counsel said the accused met gardaí by arrangement some time later.
He accepted that they had been “seeing each other” but said she had called it off “out of the blue” one day. He denied that any sexual interaction had taken place between them.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McGrath and a jury.
