Man found not guilty of sex assault on bus trip

A CORKMAN has been found not guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl on a bus in 2006.

James “Mock” O’Driscoll, aged 51, of Marsh Road, Skibbereen, Co Cork, had been accused in Cork Circuit Court of molesting the girl as they travelled on the Skibbereen-Cork bus service on November 11, 2006.

During the two-day hearing, the alleged victim had claimed O’Driscoll had rubbed her inner thigh.

However, the jury of 10 men and two women found the defendant not guilty.

Meanwhile, a Circuit Court jury yesterday heard the first evidence in the trial of a west Cork man accused of four charges of sexually assaulting his former partner’s daughter in the 1990s.

Neither party can be named in the case. The incidents are alleged to have taken place in the alleged victim’s bedroom and her mother’s bedroom in west Cork on dates between March 22, 1993, and March 21, 1995.

The alleged victim said she was aged between 12 and 13 on the occasions of the first two assaults and about 14 on the date of the other two assaults.

She claimed on the day of the first assault she went into her mother’s bedroom to watch television and that the accused was in bed asleep.

“I fell asleep and when I woke up he was touching me,” she told the court. “I brushed him away and got out of bed. I did not speak to him about it.”

She said his hand had been inside her underwear touching her vagina.

The alleged victim claimed that while the accused normally slept in bed with her mother, he would often share her bed.

On the day of the third incident, she claimed she woke up and the defendant was touching her. She said she got out of bed and went to her mother’s room. She had gone to work and the complainant said she got into her mother’s bed. She said the accused followed her and started touching her. “He told me to squeeze his hand if I liked it,” she said.

The alleged victim said she got out of the bed and returned to her own room.

Defence counsel Tom Creed put it to the alleged victim that on the occasion of the first incident the man had come into the room and found the girl “interfering” with herself.

“He claims he put his hand down over the sheet and said ‘please do not do that’,” said Mr Creed.

“That did not happen,” the witness replied.

The case continues today before Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin and a jury.