A man who said he saw halos around a 15-year-old schoolgirl was yesterday jailed for 12 months when he was convicted of three counts of harassing her.
Duncan Sloan (53), Gortna muckla, Dunmanway, Co Cork, admitted to gardai that he had a fascination with the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
He followed her and other schoolgirls around their local town at lunch hour and watched them in school, a special sitting of Macroom District Court heard.
He wrote to the girl and to the principal at her school and, while the letters were often very convoluted, there were clear references to his sexual exploits with women.
"The references were inappropriate and most alarming," said the principal. Later when interviewed about harassing the girl and following her and her schoolmates, Sloan told gardai: "I look at all the girls because they are all beautiful."
The girl told yesterday's court sitting that Sloan followed her and some friends around the town on a number of dates in March 1998. He walked 20 metres behind them. "He just gives me a creepy feeling. The grin on his face is really upsetting," she said.
The harassment came to light in 1997 when Sloan called to the girl's home and asked about a local fort. The girl was startled but he told her parents he would return with some of his writings on the local fort.
He came back a week later with some pages, which it transpired were about the girl.
"What was written on it was absolutely frightening. He mentioned a person who looked like Our Lady with a halo. I asked who the person was and he said it was my daughter. I told him what he said was terrible," the girl's mother said.
The girl's father said they began collecting their daughter from school because they feared for her safety and added that Sloan used to cycle by their house on his way home to Dunmanway even though it was out of his way.
They were forced to take out a Circuit Court injunction earlier this year to keep him away from their daughter and home, and he had abided by it.
The girl's principal said Sloan first called to the school with something he had written on local history and archaeology. He wanted him to read it but he began asking about the girl, then just 13, and said she was very beautiful.
The principal contacted the girl's parents and later alerted gardai when he saw Sloan in the town watching girls.
Garda Siobhan O'Dowd said she and a colleague observed Sloan peering into the school several times one day.
They later arrested him and questioned him about harassing the girl and he admitted sending her letters but told the court he had sent them to the school so the principal could censor them.
Sloan said he was totally bewildered as to why he had been arrested and could not even recognise the girl at the time.
But Judge Terence Finn said the evidence was within the bounds of harassment as set out in Section 10 of the Non Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997. "I am satisfied your intrusion into this family's life has been grossly invasive".
He found Sloan, who had a number of previous convictions for the misuse of drugs over the past 19 years, guilty of three counts of harassment and jailed him for a total of 12 months.
He set recognisances in the event of an appeal on his own bond of £1,000 and made it a condition that he make no attempt to contact the girl or any member of her family and not come within five miles of their home.
And he ordered Sloan upon completing his sentence not to make any attempt to contact the girl or her family, go within five miles of her home for 10 years or go within the precincts of her school while she or any family member was attending there.