Offaly jury finds man guilty of sexually assaulting young girl

A MAN has been found guilty by an Offaly jury of sexually assaulting a girl when she was aged between eight and nine.

The accused man, now aged 64, cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim.

He had pleaded not guilty at Tullamore Circuit Court last week to two counts of sexually assaulting the girl on dates unknown between April 28, 2018 and July 3, 2019.

A jury of nine men and two women (a 12^th juror was discharged after she became ill on the opening day) heard evidence over four days before Judge Sinead McMullan.

A key plank of the prosecution's case, which was led by Shane Geraghty, BL, Offaly county prosecutor (instructed by Sandra Mahon, State Solicitor) were statements made by the victim during interviews carried out by specialist gardai.

Following disclosure of the abuse by the girl when she was 13, she told the gardai that a friend of her father's who sometimes stayed in the family home asked her to go to his bedroom one morning.

The assault occurred when he bounced her up and down on his lap and put his hands down her pyjama bottoms.

The man told her it was “normal” and did not stop when she asked him to, instead saying that she should not tell anyone and threatening to ruin her father.

In evidence which Mr Geraghty told the jury was especially vivid, the girl described the man's hands as being big and hairy.

She became scared when the man said that if she told her father he would do bad things to him and her siblings.

That assault took place in the morning when the rest of her family were still asleep.

READ NEXT: Thousands of cigarettes imported illegally into Offaly

The victim also told the gardai that she believed the accused man first got to know her father before her First Communion and after that they became friends and the man did some work at the family home before they eventually had a falling out.

The first assault left her terrified, upset and confused but she forgot about it and blocked it out, telling the specialist garda interviewers that she had only remembered it in 2022 or 2023.

While she could not remember the exact dates the offences were committed, the girl said she may have known the man for up to a year and a half by the time of the first assault.

She said the second assault was committed shortly before the man left following a dispute with her father who she believed was getting suspicious.

When the victim, now aged 16, was cross-examined by defence counsel Colm Smyth, SC, by video link, she said her recollection of the second assault was more vague than the first but stated the assaults did happen.

The victim's mother, who was living apart from her husband at the time of the offending, gave evidence of her first meeting with the accused man, saying he was smartly dressed and offered to take photographs at her daughter's First Communion.

Subsequently she learned that he had become friendly with her husband and was staying over in the house some weekends when she would leave the children there with their father.

It “set off alarm bells” in her head, she said, and she was also told by her children that the man had been on holidays with them.

On a later occasion she told the man she wasn't comfortable with another adult male being in the house when the children were there and said to him “the person down the street could be a paedophile for all we know”.

Recalling the time she was told about the abuse, she said her daughter was crying and felt very ashamed and frightened.

Replying to Mr Smyth, the woman said she had been annoyed that a “grown man” was staying with her husband and their small children once every three or four weeks.

She considered not dropping the children there but complied with a court order that she would do so and also asked herself if her concerns would be taken seriously.

In his direct evidence the girl's father said he had been “taken in” by the man's “flattery and praise” and stated that he had been showering the family with gifts all the time.

After they had a dispute about money the girl's father told the man to leave and because he sometimes saw him “watching the house” afterwards, he called the guards.

When it was put to him by Mr Smyth during cross-examination that he had not mentioned the accused's “flattery” in a statement to the gardai, the girl's father said he would redo his statement if he could.

The girl's father also said that he may have been “an old fool” to make claims previously made about an item in his house. A recording of him making the claim, which he now dismisses, was played to the jury.

The witness asked Mr Smyth what relevance that matter had to his daughter and the defence counsel said he was challenging the man's credibility.

The court was also told that the accused man described the charges as “outrageous” when they were first put to him. He declined to have a solicitor present when he was being interviewed by gardai.

The accused man told gardai about a difference of opinion he had in relation to some building which was being done at the property.

In an interview with gardai the man referred to the girl's father as a “b.....” and to himself as someone who was going to expose him but he denied threatening the girl or her father.

He said he had never laid a hand on the child and accused her of lying after having been “schooled” by her father.

The accused man is on conditional bail and will appear before Longford Circuit Court on November 20 next for his sentencing hearing.