A 26-YEAR-OLD MAN who sexually assaulted a teenage girl while she and her friends were drinking has been jailed for four years and three months.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, sexually assaulted the 16-year-old by intimately touching her when she was having a sleepover at a friend’s home where he was subletting a room.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard evidence that the defendant was the only adult in the house at the time as the other adults had gone out and that he provided alcohol to some of the girls.

Detective Garda Rebecca Doyle told prosecuting counsel Lisa Dempsey BL that one of the girls was “worse for wear” and was sick. Two of the victim’s friends were taking care of this girl in an upstairs bathroom, leaving the victim alone with the defendant in a bedroom.

The defendant began to kiss the victim and then brought her to a room downstairs where he sexually molested her. Her friends came in to get the victim away from the defendant and saw her standing in front of him, Dt Gda Doyle testified.

The victim immediately told her friends what had happened. When he was later arrested the defendant denied any sexual contact and told gardaí that the three girls were making it all up because they had been caught drinking.

He told gardaí “I tried to help them, and look what happened, I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time…I should be the one suing them for this”.

After being charged, the defendant left Ireland to return to his native Romania, breaching the conditions of his bail. He was arrested on foot of a European Arrest Warrant on 16 April 2025 and has been in custody since.

After a trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court a jury convicted the man by unanimous verdict of sexual assault at a place in north Dublin on 11 May 2024.

Dt Gda Doyle read the victim impact report out in court. In her statement the girl said that she didn’t understand what was going on when the defendant assaulted her.

She said after the attack “I had to have my entire body checked by strangers” and found this very difficult. She said for a year after the attack she dropped out of school and tried to forget about it by drinking, cutting herself and starving herself.

“I used to feel guilty that I had ruined a man’s life by telling authorities. That thought was eating me alive before I finally realised I did the right thing,” she stated.

She said she blamed herself for not reacting faster to what the defendant was doing but said she knows not “it’s not my fault”.

Colman Fitzgerald SC, defending, asked the court to consider that his client had a good work record for the eight months he lived in Ireland. He said his client had only ever planned to live here for a short period in order to work and earn money for his marriage back in Romania.

He said when his client left while out on bail it was to get married.

Judge Martin Nolan said that the defendant was a lodger in the house when people were drinking and he took advantage of this situation. He said the defendant was probably also drinking on the night but that did not excuse his behaviour.

He said main aggravating factors were the disparity in age and serious level of sexual assault. He said the victim has understandably sustained long-lasting trauma and damage.

He imposed a headline sentence of seven years. Taking the mitigation into consideration, including the lack of other criminal convictions, he reduced this to a prison term of four years and three months, backdated to April.