A TEENAGER HAS been found guilty of the rape and sexual assault of a girl in a car at Limerick Racecourse on 26 December 2022 when he was fifteen and she was sixteen.

The jury of nine women and two men spent close to eleven hours considering their verdict at a sitting of Cork Central Criminal Court before finding the youth guilty by on both counts. 

Yesterday, a fifteen-year-old boy was found guilty of the rape and sexual assault of the same girl on the same occasion. He was thirteen at the time of the offence. 

A third teenager was also today also found not guilty of false imprisonment of the same girl. 

However, he was found guilty of aiding and abetting the two youths on the same date in the same place in 2022. He was fifteen at the time of the offence. 

All of the guilty verdicts for the three boys were by a 10-1 majority. 

Justice Paul McDermott thanked the jurors for their service in the case. He said that the trial had gone on much longer than expected and required a great deal of consideration from them. Sentencing of the three teenagers will occur at a later date.   

Meanwhile, the complainant in the case said that she met the boys for the first time when she went to Limerick racecourse with her friends on the date of the offence.

She agreed to get into a car in the car park. She stated 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 into the back seat of the car. 

Friends of the complainant described meeting in one of girls’ home that morning in Limerick so that they could get dressed up and put on their makeup together. Some of the group had drinks before getting into taxis to go to the race meeting.

One girl said that the complainant was crying in the aftermath of the incident.

“She could not get out full sentences, just spatters of words. She kept talking about the car, the car, repeating herself, saying, ‘the f**king (surname), I had sex with the f**king (surname)… They wouldn’t stop. I kept saying no.’ It was never, ‘he’, always, ‘they’.

Meanwhile, Dean Kelly, Senior Counsel for the Prosecution, said in his closing speech 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”.

Mr 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 into 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 it 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?”

The trial got underway on 11 March and lasted far longer than expected after members of the jury and one of the accused suffered from medical issues.