The man accused of multiple rapes and sexual assaults of a woman when she was a child told garda\u00ed that \u201cit is all made up\u201d and that the complainant was \u201ca very troubled young girl\u201d.<\/p>\n
The defendant, who is in his 50s, pleaded not guilty when the trial opened on Monday at the Central Criminal Court in Waterford. He is accused of 53 sexual offences \u2014 including more than 20 counts of rape.<\/p>\n
On the opening day, the jury was told of allegations that the defendant had abused the complainant at multiple locations between the summer of 1999 and March 2005, from when she was nine to 15 years old.<\/p>\n
A detective garda told the trial that the complainant made a statement over several hours on June 5 and June 12, 2022, alleging abuse by the defendant \u201cof a historic nature\u201d.<\/p>\n
The man was arrested for questioning on September 20, 2022. A transcript of his interviews was read to the jury by prosecuting counsel Garnet Orange. He told the interviewing garda that he had known the complainant as a child because she was a relative of his wife.<\/p>\n
The transcript included several denials of the accusations made against him. On one occasion, he told the interviewing garda that his accuser was \u201ca very troubled young girl\u201d.<\/p>\n
Later in the interview, he said: \u201cIt is all made up\u201d and also said: \u201cIt is malicious\u201d.<\/p>\n
He told garda\u00ed: \u201cI believe she had a troubled childhood\u201d and described the allegations as \u201ca cry for attention”.<\/p>\n
He later said: \u201cIt is all made up. None of it ever happened. There is clearly something wrong with that girl.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He told garda\u00ed that he had kissed the girl on the lips on the night of his daughter\u2019s christening, adding that he later apologised to her.<\/p>\n
A former secondary school teacher of the complainant gave evidence on Thursday morning. She said she had \u201cmany interactions\u201d with the complainant over a two-year period when she was a second and third year student.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The teacher was concerned that the complainant may have had an eating disorder. The former teacher \u201cbecame aware that (the complainant) was spending a lot of time with a neighbouring family\u201d, which she thought to be a \u201clittle strange\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said that while there were \u201cquestion marks\u201d in her head about it, \u201cit wasn\u2019t her job to investigate\u201d. She said the complainant told her about \u201cstuff of a sexual nature going on\u201d in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
She told the court: \u201cBy then, we had the original Children First guidelines in school.\u201d She informed the principal of the school \u201cwith (the complainant\u2019s) knowledge\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
She said she also had a \u201cdiscussion\u201d with the complainant\u2019s parents. She said: \u201cI did not feel they particularly welcomed me or my information.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The former teacher said she had made \u201ccopious notes\u201d during the two years, but said she left the school in 2010, leaving the notes behind as they were the property of the school.<\/p>\n
She agreed in cross-examination that she was basing her evidence on recollections from over a quarter of a century ago.<\/p>\n
She said the response from the complainant\u2019s parents when she made them aware of what the complainant had told her about \u201csexual stuff going on\u201d was \u201cnot warm\u201d.<\/p>\n
She continued: \u201cI certainly would have expected a different response.\u201d She also said she would have expected \u201ca much more alarmed response\u201d from them.<\/p>\n
Closing arguments were made on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man accused of multiple rapes and sexual assaults of a woman when she was a child told…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,1115,42,2285,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-402103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-headlines","tag-justice","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}