Note: The details in this court report might be distressing to read.
A MAN HAS gone on trial accused of sexually assaulting his wife over a period of nine years by inserting various objects into her vagina while the woman was unconscious.
Eilis Brennan SC, prosecuting, told the jury in her opening address that it was a difficult case and a sensitive case. The couple were in a relationship for 23 years and were married for a number of those years. They have three children together.
Counsel said it is the State’s case that the woman was unconscious and unable to give her consent when the accused man sexually assaulted her.
A garda forensic expert has told the trial that he recovered 712 thumbnail images from the man’s laptop which he said were relevant to the case.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded not guilty to 15 charges of sexually assaulting the woman by penetrating her vagina with various different objects between January 1, 2005 and September 5, 2014 at Dublin address.
The charges also include an allegation of anal rape and penetration of the woman’s anus with his thumb.
Detective Garda Paul Lennox of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau said the thumbnail images showed female genital areas – both anal and vaginal – and some of the images appeared to show “certain objects protruding from the vagina”.
He listed those objects as a high heel shoe, a large kitchen knife, a cheese grater, a beer bottle, a wine bottle, a cucumber, a carrot, a banana and a pencil.
Eilis Brennan SC said the woman woke up one night to find herself in her bed and naked from the waist down. She said the accused was at her feet with something in his hand.
Counsel said the woman will give evidence that she was searching for something on the family’s computer in March 2019 and came across a file. She said it was video of herself during which she was unconscious. She was horrified by the video and deleted it.
Brennan SC said the jury will hear that the woman got advice from someone and it was suggested that she get copies of any videos on the computer.
The woman then went back to the computer and “discovered a number of videos of herself which showed her husband putting objects inside her without her consent,” Brennan told the jury
Counsel said the woman told the man to leave the family home and later made a statement to gardaí. A warrant was secured to search the home the man was living in at the time with his parents, and computers and other items were seized. They were later forensically examined by garda experts.
Brennan told the jury that they will see a selection of the images that were retrieved by gardaí from that computer.
Consent
Counsel advised the jury that consent has to be freely given and you cannot give consent if you are asleep or unconscious.
Detective Garda Lennox told the jury that he analysed a laptop that had been seized during the search of the accused’s home.
He said he looked for any images or videos that were relevant to the case and identified a number of thumbnail images. He then passed on these thumbnail images to a colleague who met with the complainant to see if she could identify herself in any of the files.
Det Garda Lennox said the images were found in a folder that had been created on the computer in February 2009 and had last been modified in September 2014.
He said he then extracted a total of 15,567 images and went through them and categorised them. He found a total of 712 images that he said were “applicable to the case”, with the remainder of the images being relevant to the accused’s work and family photos.
Det Garda Lennox said he and a colleague later put together a booklet of 50 photographs that were relevant to the case.
Det Garda Lennox agreed with Vincent Heneghan SC, defending, that the images were thumbnail images rather than the original images and as such they were tiny images.
He accepted that although you could zoom in on the images you lose quality of those images when you zoom in. Det Garda Lennox further accepted that there was no metadata attached to those images and as such there is no way of knowing when and where these images were created.
The trial continues before the jury of six men and six women and Mr Justice Paul Burns.
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