Dublin father acquitted of sexually assaulting daughter 09/05/2008 - 19:53:07
Gardaí had to restore order in the Central Criminal Court after an unruly, triumphalist demonstration by friends and relatives of a Dublin father who was acquitted of raping and sexually assaulting his daughter.
Relatives and supporters of the 39-year-old accused man shouted and applauded after the court registrar noted the final 39th "not guilty" verdict against him and were ordered by gardaí to stop or leave.
The jury deliberated for two hours and 41 minutes before returning the not guilty verdicts. Earlier, the jury had requested Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy to read back a section of the evidence given by the accused's wife in the course of the seven-day trial.
Mr Justice McCarthy discharged the accused from the court and thanked the four women and seven men of the jury for their care and attention to what he said was a distressing case.
The accused man had denied three charges of raping his now 19-year-old daughter in 2006 and 36 of sexually abusing her on dates from May 1996 to January 2006.
He claimed in evidence that she was "lying through her teeth" in her allegation that he abused her over the 10-year period. "I never laid a hand on her in my life," he said.
The man also said his wife was "very much mistaken and wrong" in her evidence of once finding him asleep in their daughter's bed with one hand on her stomach and two fingers insider her knickers.
"That is a lie," he told defence counsel, Mr Diarmaid McGuinness SC (with Ms Anne-Marie Lawlor BL). "She never saw that because it never happened."
He said he never slept in the same bed as the complainant and rejected his wife's claim that she had put their "very drunk" daughter into his bed at about 5am on New Year's Day 2006 for fear she would fall out of her bunk bed. The complainant claimed her father raped her for the first time on this occasion.
He said he went to bed with his wife after the New Year's Eve party in their home and woke up alone.
He agreed with prosecuting counsel, Mr Paul Coffey SC (with Mr Michael Bowman BL) that he had a difference with his daughter because he believed her boyfriend was too old for her because he was 22 and she was only 17 at the time.
He said he told his wife at the time that their daughter's boyfriend "wants different things that she does" because he was five years older than her.
"She chose her boyfriend over her own family," the accused told Mr Coffey.
One female juror who admitted she spoke on Thursday morning before the court sat to a person in the company of the accused was discharged from further jury service.
When Mr Justice McCarthy asked the remaining 11 members if the woman had said anything to them concerning the case, they replied in chorus: "No, the problem has been dealt with."
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