A teenager has been found guilty of the rape and sexual assault of a girl in a car at Limerick Racecourse on December 26, 2022 when he was fifteen and she was sixteen.
The jury of nine women and two men spent close to eleven hours considering their verdict at a sitting of Cork Central Criminal Court before finding the youth guilty on both counts.
On Monday, a fifteen-year-old boy was found guilty of the rape and sexual assault of the same girl on the same occasion. He was thirteen at the time of the offence. Emotions were high in the courtroom yesterday with some of his family members becoming visibly upset when he was convicted of the offence.
A third teenager was also found not guilty on Tuesday of false imprisonment of the same girl. However, he was found guilty of aiding and abetting the two youths on the same date in the same place in 2022. He was fifteen at the time of the offence. Both teenage boys were emotional and hugged in the dock this afternoon as they found out their fate. All of the guilty verdicts for the three boys were by a 10-1 majority.
Ms Justice Paul McDermott thanked the jurors for their service in the case. He said that the trial had gone on much longer than expected and required a great deal of consideration from them. Sentencing of the three teenagers will occur at a later date.
Meanwhile, the complainant in the case said that that she met the boys for the first time when she went to Limerick racecourse with her friends on the date of the offence.
She agreed to get in to a car in the car park. She stated that the accused, who was 13 at the time of the alleged offence, took his pants down in the car and had sex with her without her consent.
She gave evidence that she told the teenager that she didn’t want to have sex with him. She recalled telling the youth “No”. She also said that she told him she was having her period at the time. She said after the first boy raped her, a second boy got in to the back seat of the car.
Friends of the complainant described meeting in one of girl's homes that morning in Limerick so that they could get dressed up and put on their make up together. Some of the group had drinks before getting in to taxis to go to the race meeting.
One girl said that the complainant was crying in the aftermath of the incident.
“She could not get out full sentences, just spatters of words. She kept talking about the car, the car, repeating herself, saying, ‘the f**king (surname), I had sex with the f**king (surname)… They wouldn’t stop. I kept saying no.’ It was never, ‘he’, always, ‘they’.
“She was angry. She was hitting things, screaming she wanted to die, she wanted to kill herself.”
Another teenage girl gave evidence that in the aftermath of the incident, the victim in the case was angry and crying and saying she wanted to kill herself.
Meanwhile, Dean Kelly, Senior Counsel for the Prosecution, said in his closing speech that the boys were cackling, laughing and encouraging each other as they acted as a group in the car.
He said that the three co-accused wanted the jury to believe that the complainant was “a nasty, evil, mendacious liar”. He said the account of the boys was that within moments of entering the car, the girl was “in total control of an orgy”.
Mr Kelly said that the reality was that the boys took “what they wanted from her (the complainant) physically and sexually whether she wanted to or not”.
He said from the moment the boys got in to the car they acted as a single unit.
“(Name) moves the car. He says he just wanted to go for a drive. That is inherent nonsense. It was so that whatever was going on in the car was going to be done away from prying eyes.
"This is a group working together. (Name of driver) is an enthusiastic member of the group who achieves his own sexual gratification.
"Is it possible to believe that by the time she (the complainant) reached the car she was an almost transformed human being that she chose to lose her virginity in a dirty car with an audience of shouting and sniggering boys?”
The trial got underway on March 11 and lasted far longer than expected after members of the jury and one of the accused suffered from medical issues.
The trial was delayed by a day after one juror fainted and another experienced a cardiac event. Dr Aoife Fanning was in the witness box on March 18 last giving evidence of examining the complainant at a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in Limerick on the evening of December 26, 2022 when a juror became unwell.
The court was cleared shortly before noon and Dr Fanning assessed and treated the patient. It was established that the juror had fainted. The case was adjourned until 2.15pm to see if the juror would be physically able to resume his duties.
However, when Mr Justice McDermott entered the courtroom that afternoon he was informed that another juror had experienced an emergency cardiac episode over lunchtime. The second juror was also initially assessed at the scene by Dr Fanning. The trial proceeded before a jury of eleven, having lost one juror.
The trial was later delayed by three days when the youth who was 13 at the time of the offence had to go to hospital. He returned on crutches only to collapse in court, leading to another adjournment of the case.
Tom Creed, Defence Counsel for one of the accused men, took to quoting the character of Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet when the trial was constantly interrupted by issues.
Addressing Mr Justice McDermott. he said: “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”
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