Mother ‘out drinking’ at time of sex attacks

A WOMAN who claims she was raped and sexually assaulted when she was 12 by a man who was babysitting her younger siblings told the trial yesterday her mother was always out drinking at the time of the attacks in December 2001.

A 42-year-old man has denied raping and sexually assaulting the woman in the bedroom of her home, and denied the rape and sexual assault of her then nine-year-old sister in a house in Kerry.

A jury of six men and six women have been sworn in at the Central Criminal Court, sitting in Tralee, to try the man on 11 counts of a sexual nature.