A man who defiled his 15-year-old neighbour has received a fully suspended sentence.
The court heard that a jury had returned a verdict of guilty relating to an alleged rape following a trial in June of 2016. However, the conviction was quashed in the Court of Appeal in June of last year as a result of the man’s lawyers being forbidden to ask questions about the complainant taking the contraceptive pill during the trial.
The man (26), who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, has now pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to defilement of a child at his family address on October 4th and 5th, 2014.
He had pleaded not guilty to an offence of rape on the same date. He was acquitted of this alleged offence by a jury following a trial in July of this year.
In her victim impact statement, which was read out in court, the victim said that after she reported the offence to gardaí, she had to walk past the man’s house every day to leave her estate. She said she feared the man would now move back to the address.
The victim said she was repeatedly called a liar and had it said that she was just trying to get attention during the first trial. She said the man had his conviction overturned due to her taking the contraceptive pill and during the second trial she was not asked any questions about it.
Changed story
She said that the man had told lies from the start and that he had changed his story from the first trial where he said that nothing happened. The victim said she had to sit through two trials and answer questions for hours while the man sat in court and said nothing. She said it felt like she was the one on trial.
A local garda told Bernard Condon SC, prosecuting, that on the date in question the victim, who was 15, received a Facebook message from the accused and went to his family home which was a few doors down from her own.
When she entered, the then 21-year-old man shouted from upstairs for her to lock the door and she did. She joined the man in his bedroom where he had a cannabis joint that they both smoked. The man put his arm around the girl and then had sexual intercourse with her, which she had never done before.
The man served 24 months in custody after being convicted by a jury following the first trial, but the convictions were later quashed.
John Fitzgerald SC, defending, said his client is the father of two children and has abused cannabis and cocaine in the past. He submitted that there was no element of grooming in the case.
Exacerbated
Mr Justice Paul McDermott said the damage done to the victim was exacerbated by the man’s persistent lying about the intercourse and by the subjecting of her to extensive cross examination based on the lie that he did not have sexual intercourse with her.
Mr Justice McDermott said it was “entirely reprehensible” that he would abuse the criminal justice process in this way. He said he did not put much value on the expression of remorse put forward by the man.
He said there was some mitigation in the man’s late plea of guilty, his lack of previous convictions, his age and his family circumstances. He said the man had served two years in prison and that had to be factored into any sentence he gets now.
Mr Justice McDermott sentenced the man to 15 months imprisonment, but suspended the sentence in full for two years on condition that he abide by any direction of the Probation Service for two years.
He also ordered that the man must not approach the victim or any member of her family himself, through a third-party or via any other means whatsoever.