Sex assault victims: Trial as traumatic as abuse
All were severely traumatised by the abuse and they were also traumatised and embarrassed by the trial and the court experience, the court was told.
Three of the girls were in court yesterday.
Now in their late teens and early 20s, they were in tears during the proceedings.
John O’Connell, aged 59, of Killaly, Castleisland, Co Kerry, who had worked in the water services department of Kerry County Council, had denied all 29 charges relating to sexual assaults of the four girls between 2003 and 2008. He was found guilty on all counts by a majority verdict on Mar 23.
He was aged 50 when the assaults began and his victims were between the ages of 10 and 14, the trial was told.
Seventeen charges related to one victim, eight to a second, three to the third, and there was one charge involving a fourth girl.
One of the assaults took place in the county council van he used to read water meters. Other assaults occurred in the home of some of the victims and in his own home, the trial heard.
Responding to prosecutor Tom Rice at yesterday’s sentence hearing, Garda Emma Mullane of Tralee told how the victim of 17 of the assaults was unable to bring herself to come to court or to write a victim impact statement.
The abuse began late in primary school and continued to secondary school.
“Matters came to a head after she became disruptive at home,” said the garda.
A high achiever all through national school in sport as well as academic subjects, her grades plummeted and she became extremely disruptive.
She was still “totally traumatised” and could not cope.
“In her own words she feels her childhood has been robbed and she doesn’t know what it was like to be a child,” said Garda Mullane.
She was focusing on her college course and this was her mainstay.
Two of the victims, in statements read by the garda, spoke of being scarred for life, of their robbed childhood, and of the impact it had on their loving and wonderful parents
Another said how it had destroyed her relationship with her own mother and that the court experience had been so difficult and traumatic it was possibly second only to the abuse.
She rarely went out socialising and buried herself in work.
“I feel I have jumped from the age of 13 years to being an adult,” she said in the statement read by Garda Mullane.
The victim of one of the assaults said: “I have felt it was my fault and if only I had said it at the time, it wouldn’t have happened to others.”
Being “dragged” through the court was the worst two weeks of her life and it put her off going through the legal system again, she said.
The girl who read her own statement, now aged 18, said she had found the court experience difficult embarrassing and traumatic.
However, she was determined to have a good life.
O’Connell’s senior counsel, Denis Vaughan Buckley, said he accepted the jury’s verdict but said his client maintained his innocence.
Judge Carroll Moran adjourned passing sentence to May 4 and remanded O’Connell in continuing custody.
