Man tells Kerry court he was groped by older man during bikers’ festival

A man has told a Tralee court he woke during an annual bikers' festival in Killarney to find two other people in his bed, and he was being groped by an older man.

A 53-year-old man has gone on trial at the Circuit Criminal Court in Tralee. He denies the sexual assault of a 44-year-old man at a house in Killarney in the early hours of May 31st, 2015.

It was the June bank holiday weekend of BikeFest, an annual gathering of upmarket Harley Davidson and other expensive motorbikes, with live music and entertainment all day in the open-air car park area between the Gleneagle and Brehon Hotels.

The complainant attended the festival each year and usually met up with friends, including two sisters. He had been there since around 2pm on Saturday, May 30th and had “more than a dozen pints” of the promoted drink, Guinness Hophouse 13, he said in evidence.

The accused man joined them at some stage in the evening. When the music stopped at midnight, the four – the two sisters and the two men – returned to a private house for a nightcap and for food.

However, while sitting on the couch, the accused put his hand up the back of the other man's jumper, the complainant told Tom Rice, prosecuting.

“I was sitting in a settee. The accused man was beside me. We were all talking. Next minute I noticed the accused had his hand on the small of my back, underneath my jumper, and outside my T-shirt. I had a brown jumper and a white T-shirt with long sleeves. I told him to stop.”

The complainant said he got up as the older man kept persisting and he moved to another couch, but the accused followed him.

“Eventually I had enough and I asked if there was a bed I could sleep in,” the the man told Mr Rice.

Spare bedroom

He said he was brought to a spare bedroom, which had a double bed, and he went to sleep fully clothed, with his shoes on – lying on top of the duvet.

“Next thing I recall a hand down inside my pants, playing with my penis and trying to grope my testicles.”

He could not remove the hand which proceeded to attempt to interfere with his anus. “I realised there was someone else in the bed.”

When he asked who it was, one of his female friends, who was underneath the duvet, answered from in front of him and said: “It’s me, who do you think it is?”

“Then I realised in shock there was someone behind me and I got up,” he told Mr Rice. “There were three people in the bed and I was in the middle.”

He left the room in shock at what had happened and the woman accompanied him to the sitting room. He called the gardaí and was told, because he had drink taken, it would be better to make his complaint about the man the next morning.

Cross-examined by Mark Nichols SC, the complainant said he had no prior plans to stay in the house, but asked for a spare bed to crash in as he was "sick of the accused's" advances and felt unable to walk home as he had too much drink taken.

“I definitely had no plans to stay in that house,” he told Mr Nichols. “ I didn’t realise the accused was in the bed.”

There was only one spare bed, he also agreed.

The trial before a jury of six men and six women and presided over by Judge John Hannan continues.