PLEASE NOTE THE DETAILS BELOW MAY BE DISTRESSING FOR SOME:
Two complainants in the trial of a 59-year-old man who is on trial for over one hundred and twenty counts of historical abuse have both described how they had their genitals touched on numerous occasions.
The Kilkenny man who can’t be named for legal reasons is on trial for 121 counts of historical sex abuse, which include anal and oral rape as well as sexual assault at various locations, against eight male complainants which were then aged between ten and eleven years of age. The offending occurred between 1995 and 2007. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
The Central Criminal Court yesterday (Thursday) heard from the first complainant in the trial who told the jury that he was playing in the vicinity of the accused’s house when he went into the house because he had a stomach ache. The accused was known to the then-child as a family friend.
The accused man allegedly told the then eleven-year-old boy to sit down and that he would rub his stomach for him. The man described how the accused rubbed his stomach and then began to rub and touch the boy’s penis, which allegedly lasted for twenty–twenty–five minutes. The court heard that an incident similar in nature happened the following days also.
A third alleged incident was described by the first complaint, where the accused came and lay down behind the boy and began to rub himself; this lasted for five-ten minutes when the man then pulled down the trousers of the boy and inserted his penis into the boy’s anus. The man described the pain as “excruciating” and that he would “never forget it”.
The complainant told the court that he jumped out of bed, and the accused man shouted at him, “There is nothing wrong, there is nothing f***ing wrong”. Years later, when the boy was a grown man, the accused said something to the man in a pub, and the complainant described that he “saw red” and hit the man and was then restrained by one of his friends. The man said he then said, “That is for what you did to me years ago”.
This complainant told his wife about the abuse in 2011 and decided to make a complaint to the gardai after his brother told him the accused man’s windows had been smashed. He said he rang the local garda station and pleaded with the gardai for the individuals involved in the smashing of the windows not to get in trouble. He said he felt “angry” that he {the accused} had been “interfering with other kids”. He told the gardai that he had been abused by the accused and made a formal statement.
Roisin Lacey, SC, defending, told the man that her client denies all of these allegations, that it is his position that none of this happened and that anything you have told the gardai is untrue. She said, “It is my instruction that you used to bunk off school and go to the accused home to watch TV and smoke cigarettes”, to which he replied, “Well, your instruction is wrong”.
She asked him where the accused man’s wife was during this time, and he said, “She was never in the house when I was there.” He believed that she may have been in the hospital for a time. She then asked where the accused children were, and he said he “didn’t know, maybe in bed.”
The man did agree somewhat that at some stage in his early twenties, he may have fixed a toilet in the man’s house, but he has no recollection of doing so. He said he had put what happened to the “back of my mind”, that the accused was a family friend, and that his parents would have probably questioned me as to why I wouldn’t fix it, and I didn’t want to tell them why.
After the man had disclosed the alleged abuse to his wife in 2011, he then attended counselling. When asked by defence counsel why he did not report it to the gardai then, he said, “I just didn’t tell them”.
Ms Lacey put it to the man that her client says that you went to bed on the night of the alleged bedroom incident in the children’s room, and when my client woke the next morning, you were gone, to which the man said, “complete lies”. She then said her client had instructed her that at no stage did you say that you had stomach pain and that he was never alone with you in the living room, rubbing you like you described, to which the man replied, “More lies”.
A second complainant told Dominic McGinn, SC, prosecuting, that the accused made his house “open to boys” in the area by giving them cigarettes and pornographic magazines. The man said he was in the house on a few occasions, but on one occasion, when he was about twelve years of age, the accused put a porn VHS on the TV.
The man told the court that he was not sure how, but he ended up sitting on the edge of the man’s bed, and the man began to touch the boy’s penis over his clothing. The accused masturbated while touching the boy.
A second incident of a similar nature occurred when the accused stopped and picked the boy up when he was walking home in the rain. The accused brought the boy by car to a country lane and carried out similar abuse, only to be interrupted by a farmer in his tractor.
The man described a third incident when he saw what he believed was the accused carrying out a sexual act on another boy. The then young boy went to go into the home of the accused, and the accused told him to “f**k off”.
The second complainant told counsel that he first told anyone in 2021 when he spoke to the gardai.
During cross-examination, defence counsel said her client denies these allegations and says they are untrue and that there was never a pornographic magazine.
She asked the man why he had gone to his house on the day in question, and he said, “Probably to get cigarettes.
Ms Lacey said it was my instruction that there was no pornography on the TV or in the house, to which the man said, “Well, there was that day because I saw it”.
She asked the man if he was ever touched under his clothing or asked to do anything to the accused, to which he said, “Never.”
She asked him if he had discussed it with his friends after the alleged incident, and he replied, “I haven’t spoken to anyone about this for 25 years.” He also said that the gardai came to him after someone else mentioned his name in their statement.
When asked if the accused wife was there while this alleged incident occurred, he said, “No, it wouldn’t have happened if she was there.
The trial continues before Ms Justice Eileen Creedon.
