Cork jury finds teen not guilty of rape of cousin

A jury has unanimously decided that a teenager aged around 15 was not guilty of raping and sexually assaulting his cousin when she was aged around five years back in 2011.

Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford thanked the jury of six men and six women at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork after  their unanimous 'not guilty' verdicts in the case against the defendant who is now aged around 30.

Marjorie Farrelly, prosecution senior counsel, said at the outset of the case that the jury would be concerned with two alleged incidents in County Cork at the complainant’s home between May 2011 and September 2011, the first an alleged sexual assault, the second an oral rape.

The complainant was aged between five and six at the time and the defendant was 15 to 16, and they are cousins. His family used to visit her family on summer holidays and occasionally her family used to visit his house.

SHED AT BACK OF HOUSE

The complainant, who is now aged 20, said that the defendant used to bring her, when she was a child, to a shed at the back of her house where there was a mattress on the floor. She said that he interfered with her vagina using his fingers in the sexual assault and that on another occasion in the shed he put his penis in her mouth – the oral rape charge.

In her evidence during the trial and in statements to gardaí she said that the defendant also threatened her with a knife.

Defence senior counsel Donal O’Sullivan said to the jury: “She said it happened. My client – when he spoke to the guards – said it did not.” Mr O’Sullivan said that delay was an issue in the case in the sense that the most recent alleged incident occurred 14 years ago.

“There might be a temptation so say, why would she say it? It must be true. But if you make that assumption, then if someone makes a complaint there is no point in having a trial at all. The simple fact is that my client has no idea why she said it. This case is ultimately about reliability,” 

Mr O’Sullivan said.

He suggested that the jury could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt because of inconsistencies. Mr O’Sullivan said that in one account the complainant said the defendant put a knife to her throat saying that if she told anyone he would kill her, but in another version, she said he held a knife to her in order to make her perform oral sex.

“It is a question of whether you can rely on her, beyond reasonable doubt,” the defence senior counsel said.

The jury was not told that this was the second trial of the case and that after extensive deliberations the first jury was unable to reach a verdict on either of the two charges, so there was a re-trial before the new jury. There is a legal prohibition on identifying the parties.