A TEENAGER HAS been found guilty by majority verdict of the rape and sexual assault of a girl in a car at Limerick Racecourse when he was thirteen and she was sixteen.

The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was convicted by a margin of 10 -1 on both counts at a sitting of the Central Criminal Court in Cork today. The jury of 12 had dropped to eleven during the trial after one juror was discharged due to illness.

The jury will resume their deliberations tomorrow in relation to a second youth who is charged with rape and sexual assault of the same girl on the same occasion at Limerick Racecourse in Patrickswell on 26 December, 2022. He was fifteen at the time of the alleged offence.

The jury, who commenced their deliberations last Friday, will also resume their deliberations tomorrow as to whether a third youth is guilty or not of aiding and abetting the two youths and falsely imprisoning the girl on 26 December, 2022. That young man was 15 at the time of the alleged incident.

The jury were told at the outset of the case and by Mr Justice Paul McDermott in his charge to them that the trial involved three separate cases. The judge said that the cases were being heard together as a matter of convenience.

Meanwhile, the trial which got underway on 11 March, previously heard evidence from the victim in the case. She said that she met the boys for the first time when she went to Limerick racecourse with her friends.

She said that she had agreed to get in to a car in the car park. She said 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.

“What happened then was his friend jumped in and he did the same thing. (Rape her).”

Tom Creed, SC, for the 13 year old (who is now 15) said his client was of the belief that the sex he had with the girl was consensual. The young woman disagreed.

Creed had asked her if she wanted to “get with” one of the boys and if she had agreed to go somewhere private to kiss him. She confirmed that this was the case.

The girl said that she was after a couple of alcoholic drinks and “wasn’t exactly thinking properly” or as she “usually would.”

Defence

Defence barrister Vincent Heneghan, SC, representing the then 15 year old accused of rape (who is now 17) said that his client admitted having sexual intercourse with the girl but claimed that “it was consensual.”

Heneghan said that his client maintained that the complainant had initiated the sexual contact and had taken off her own underwear whilst helping him take off his clothes. The young woman said she disagreed with “the whole story” as laid out.

When asked by Heneghan how many alcohol drinks she had over the course of the day she said that she had more than three but she couldn’t be certain of a number after that.

Heneghan said that the young woman “didn’t appear to be drunk” according to the recollection of his client. The complainant said that she didn’t discuss drinking with the 15 year old who allegedly raped her.

“I didn’t state it. (That she had been drinking). But you could see it in me.”

Specialist interview

The jury also heard an official garda recording of a specialist interview with the girl which took place shortly after the alleged incident.

During the interview she said that she was ‘freaked’ by what had happened to her in the car at the racecourse.

She said that when she got out of the car she told her friends what had occurred. They contacted her friend’s mother who brought her back to their house. Her friend gave her a pair of Mickey Mouse pyjamas and she tired to nibble at some food. She said her own mother was then contacted and she later went to a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit with her parents.

Meanwhile, prosecuting senior counsel Dean Kelly said in his closing speech last week 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.”

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 is 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?” he said. 

Tom McInerney, SC, defending a now 17 year boy who is charged with false imprisonment and aiding and abetting the other boys, said that he wasn’t suggesting that the girl was a liar.

He said that what he was suggesting was that when the girl left the car in the car park at the races and returned to her friends “things took a different turn.”

Vincent Heneghan, SC, for the second teenager accused of rape, who is now 17, said that from 5.30pm to 8.30pm on the night of the alleged offence the word rape was never mentioned by the complainant.

The jury started their deliberations last Friday at 11am and resumed them today (Monday) at 10.36am. They returned their verdict in relation to one accused shortly after 5pm today.