THE COURT OF Appeal has upheld a former Defence Force member\u2019s conviction for the repeated rape of a fellow soldier, rejecting his argument that the jury shouldn\u2019t have heard the victim\u2019s distressed 999 call.<\/p>\n
Kielan Mooney (30) of Bloomfield Park, Derry, was convicted following a trial at the Central Criminal Court in December 2024 of anal rape, oral rape and rape of the woman at a Dublin hotel on 26 July 2021.<\/p>\n
He was jailed for eight and a half years by Mr Justice Tony Hunt in January the following year.<\/p>\n
Mooney had pleaded not guilty to a total of six charges \u2013 two charges of rape, two charges of oral rape, a charge of anal rape and a charge of sexual assault. The jury failed to reach a verdict on the three remaining charges.<\/p>\n
The victim, who is in her 20s, is also a serving soldier of the Irish Defence Forces. She indicated that while she was content for Mooney to be named in reporting of the case, she did not wish to be identified.<\/p>\n
Mooney appealed his conviction, arguing that a recording of a 999 call made by the complainant after the incident should not have been admitted at trial.<\/p>\n
His senior counsel Dominic McGinn said that by the time the call was made at 1.38am, the appellant had left the scene, the complainant\u2019s friend had arrived, and she had spoken to her mother on the phone approximately half an hour earlier.<\/p>\n
He said there had been \u201can abundance of evidence\u201d of the complainant\u2019s emotional state, so the phone call was not necessary to illustrate this. He said the victim told the call handler, whilst in a distressed state, that she had been raped.<\/p>\n
McGinn the prejudicial nature of the evidence outweighed its probative value.<\/p>\n
Counsel argued that this created \u201ca real injustice\u201d in the case and allowed the jury to draw conclusions that were not permissible and the judge erred in admitting it.<\/p>\n
However, Patrick Gageby SC, for the State, said it was a paradox to suggest that because there was distress in the case and that wasn\u2019t in issue, that the 999 call was somehow inadmissible.<\/p>\n
He said the issue of rape arose because the operator asked the complainant what had happened. He said the defence case was that the victim was distressed not because she had been raped, but because she was \u201cdisappointed\u201d that the appellant had left and she didn\u2019t want him to.<\/p>\n
In dismissing the appeal on Tuesday, presiding judge Ms Justice Tara Burns said the court did not agree with the appellant\u2019s case that there was little probative value with respect to what was played on the call.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is the issue of her distress was a matter before the jury,\u201d she said. \u201cWhile her being distressed wasn\u2019t at issue, the reason for her distress was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Justice Burns, who sat with Mr Justice John Edwards and Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, noted Mooney had asserted during the course of the trial that the reason for the victim\u2019s distress was because he was leaving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt clearly was of relevance, and it clearly was at issue in terms of the jury\u2019s determination,\u201d said the judge.<\/p>\n
She said this was \u201crelevant, probative\u201d material that was properly referred to the jury and was admissible before them.<\/p>\n
Ms Justice Burns said its probative value outweighed its prejudicial effect and the court was dismissing the appeal.<\/p>\n
The trial heard the woman was out socialising with other army members when they met a group of soldiers from Mooney\u2019s barracks in Donegal.<\/p>\n
She and Mooney got speaking and they decided to go back to the woman\u2019s friend\u2019s hotel room in the city centre.<\/p>\n
The woman told the trial that Mooney anally raped her in her friend\u2019s hotel room. She said she had asked him to stop but he did not.<\/p>\n
Afterwards she went to the bathroom and was crying. She managed to text her friend. Mooney came into the room and asked her what was wrong before he took her by the hand and brought her back into the bedroom.<\/p>\n
Mooney then forced the woman to perform oral sex on him before he pushed her on to the bed and raped her.<\/p>\n
The woman managed to get back into the bathroom and phoned her friend who told her that she and two other male friends were nearly at the hotel. After they arrived, the two men forced Mooney out of the room and the garda\u00ed were called.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE COURT OF Appeal has upheld a former Defence Force member\u2019s conviction for the repeated rape of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42851,10202,54,13308,7726,42,241949,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-573459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-central-criminal-court","tag-court-of-appeal","tag-courts","tag-defence-forces","tag-derry","tag-headlines","tag-kielan-mooney","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\/573459","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=573459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}