Gardai in Cork said last evening that some 450 households have been visited by the 15-strong detective team investigating the rape of an 8-year-old girl in the city last week.
The girl was playing with her six-year old sister in the Gardiner's Hill/St Luke's/Dillons Cross area of the city on Saturday week last between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. when the two were approached by a man said to be in his late teens or early 20s.
The approach was made during a heavy shower of rain and the man asked the two girls to stand in for shelter. He also offered them ice cream.
The girls ran away but he followed and dragged the eight-year-old into an area of waste ground where he raped her. She was later found in a distressed condition by passers-by and her parents were alerted.
Since the attack she has been undergoing counselling, and a massive Garda hunt has been put in train in an effort to track the perpetrator.
Supt P.J. Brennan, of Mayfield Garda station, in Cork, who is leading the investigation, told The Irish Times yesterday that no effort was being spared in the attempt to find the attacker and bring him to justice.
One theory is that the man may have been loitering in the general area for some time before the attack.
Supt Brennan added that the exhaustive house-to-house inquiries were continuing but that, so far, nothing significant had emerged.
He said the gardai had deferred issuing an identikit image of the attacker because they were not satisfied with the accuracy of the image. "We are conducting a detailed analysis of all the information that has come to us through the valuable help of the public; but until we are absolutely satisfied, we will not release the identikit image. So far, we have visited 450 households and we are still in the process of knocking on doors.
"We are working around the clock on this case and each day since the attack the investigating team has assembled to evaluate the evidence and to see where we should go from here."
Asked about a petrol bomb attack on a premises near the area where the girl was raped, last week, Supt Brennan said the incident had been investigated in accordance with normal Garda procedure.