A GARDA sergeant, who groped a young female colleague before telling her, “I’d say you’re some screamer in bed”, has been found guilty of sexual assault.
The sergeant, who was fined €1,000, had grabbed her leg and whispered the remark after she screamed in shock, Dublin District Court heard yesterday.
The sergeant, whose 28-year career is in ruins, is facing the sack and risks losing his pension, the court was told.
He had denied sexually assaulting the woman at a Garda station in Dublin, on a date in June 2010, but was found guilty following a non-jury trial yesterday.
Reporting restrictions had been imposed earlier to protect the identity of the victim.
It was the second time in a week that he was found guilty of sexual assault. He is to be sentenced on Friday for groping a female probationer garda twice in 2010.
Yesterday the sergeant, who did not give evidence, wept and hugged his partner in the public gallery after Judge Timothy Lucey delivered a guilty verdict.
“There is no reason that can be attributed to it apart from indecency in my view,” the judge said. However, he added that it was not a jailing offence.
Judge Lucey gave the sergeant three months to pay the fine otherwise he will face a five-day prison sentence.
In evidence, the female officer told Judge Lucey she had to put a digital camera in a docking station in a wall-mounted cabinet in the sergeant’s office.
The cabinet was behind his desk and she moved into a two-foot gap behind him.
She did not want to disturb him and leaned towards the cabinet as he sat facing forward while he worked on a computer.
“I raised my left hand to place the camera back in the docking station,” she told the court. “To maintain balance I extended my right leg.”
The sergeant, “raised his right arm and grabbed me on the inner upper thigh of my right thigh”, she said.
She thought he gripped her for about 30 seconds as she hopped on one leg and “screamed at the top of my voice”.
“I dropped the camera in the docking station and I left the room and I ran, to be honest with you. I was in shock at what had happened,” she told State solicitor Caroline Deacy.
The officer also said she struck her superior officer to get him to let go.