*Warning… Some people may find the content of this court report distressing*

A TEENAGE GIRL has told a trial she witnessed a 13-year-old boy being held down and having a hairbrush handle pushed up his backside in a park in Dublin.

Two boys, both aged 15, have pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting the boy on a date in June last year.

They were aged 14 at the time of the alleged incident. None of the parties in the case can be identified. The incident is alleged to have happened when the boy was lying face down on the ground after he had played a game of football with pals.

The non-jury trial commenced before Judge Brian O’Shea at the Dublin Children’s Court on Monday and continued today.

In her statement to gardaí the girl, aged 14, said she was friends with the complainant and she knew the defendants. She was only three or four feet away from them when it happened.

She said one defendant was on top of him and the second then “put the hairbrush up his bum”.

She told gardai the first boy removed the hairbrush.

The girl alleged the boy’s shorts ripped and he appeared to be crying afterwards.

He left on his bike and quit a Snapchat group that a number of their friends used, and she met up with him a few days later to see if he was okay.

After her interview video was played, she was cross-examined, via-video-link.

Counsel for the first boy, Keith Spencer BL, said his client denied using the brush. He said his client had been wrestling with his friend and holding him down.

She nodded when counsel put it to her that his client’s position was that he had not known what was happening behind him or anything about the hairbrush being used.

She told Emer Ni Chuagain BL, for the second boy, that her client had been holding the hairbrush. Ms Ni Chuagain put it to her that her client’s account was that he did not touch the hairbrush, but he had tried to stop the first boy.

She disagreed with that version.

She did not hear the boys speaking to each other afterwards, she said, and she admitted that she could not remember if another youth was also involved.

The court heard she told her mother who then contacted the complainant’s mother.

Earlier, the court heard the boy told a Garda interviewer that he lay facing down on the side of the park with some other young people.

He alleged one of the defendants lay on top of him for a few minutes.

The boy said he panicked and tried to get him off by pinching him and he could not breathe. He told gardai someone had a hairbrush and gave it to the boy who now had his legs across him.

He alleged the boy “put it up my arsehole” by its handle, and it went half way up for five or six seconds.

The second defendant, he claimed, “came over and put it right up”. The first boy held him down, he said. In his interview he stated that his shorts and underwear “were twisted into my arsehole” and they were torn.

He glanced around and could see them laughing. “They thought it was a mess, but it was very serious,” he said during the interview.

It was sore, stinging and he felt sick and embarrassed afterwards, he said.

He told gardai he heard the two boys talking to each other afterwards. He alleged the second defendant said “you did it first” and that the first defendant replied “you are the one who stuck it up all the way”.

Questioned in court he agreed he and the first defendant were wrestling fans and often had mess fights. However, he told the court he could not breathe as a result of the way that boy lay on him. He said it hurt and it was not wrestling.

Counsel for the second defendant told him her client’s version was that the boy sitting on him had the brush and her client came over to take it from him. He agreed he could not know for a fact why that boy was behind him or see what was going on behind him.

The hearing continues tomorrow.