System linked assaults

A POWERFUL computer system gave gardaí the breakthrough on this string of sexual assaults.

The Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) found links between 15 sexual assaults (including two attempted assaults) in Cavan and Carlow over a two-year period.

“It’s a sophisticated bit of software. It can take many thousands of incidents and see if there are any linkages, that would not be possible to see manually,” explained Detective Superintendent John McCann of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.