Galway Man Found Guilty Of Assaulting Young Girl

A Galway man has been convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl in her bedroom two years ago.

The 42-year-old man had denied kissing the girl as she lay under the bed covers in her bedroom on April 15, 2006.

The jury in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court took three hours to return its 10 - 2 majority guilty verdict on day-three of the trial.

The man, who cannot be identified to protect the identity of his victim, was acquitted by direction of Judge Patrick McCartan on a second charge of sexually assaulting the girl by touching her body on the same day.

Judge McCartan withdrew this charge from the jury following an application by defence counsel, Mr Martin Giblin SC, and directed that a "not guilty" verdict be returned on it.

The now 13-year-old girl said the man stayed in the house while her mother and her mother's friend dropped another child at a relative's house.

She told prosecuting counsel, Ms Roisin Lacey BL via video-link, that the man came into her room after he got a bottle of milk for his daughter and started kissing her. She said he asked her what age she was and to open her mouth but she refused and he left the room.

When she heard her mother and her mother's friend return, she ran downstairs and told them what had happened.

The girl's mother gave evidence that she confronted the man when her daughter told her what happened and asked him to leave the house.

She said she had to "bundle" him out the door and as she stood in the driveway shouting at him to leave, he "came in close" and said to her: "She (the girl) wasn't that good anyway."

(DW/JM)