Firefighter accused of abusing babysitter

A woman told a court that a Limerick firefighter, now retired, convinced her it was normal to perform oral sex on him when, as a child, she babysat at his home.

Michael O’Grady, aged 59, of Meadowbrook, Corbally, Limerick, pleaded not guilty at Limerick Circuit Court to 10 counts of indecent assault on a girl between Oct 1976 and Jan 1981, when she was aged between 11 and 16.

On turning 16, she refused the accused’s request to have full intercourse.

In evidence yesterday, the woman, now 48, recalled spending weekends baby-sitting at the home of the accused at Shannon.

On returning with his wife, Mr O’Grady would come down to the sitting room where she stayed and would chat. He then began to put his hands inside her clothes and stroke her breast.

Over time, this progressed to him penetrating her vagina digitally.

He told her there was nothing wrong and it was a pleasure that should be enjoyed. She was about 12 at the time, she said.

It became the norm when she was babysitting. On one occasion, she remembered Mr O’Grady putting his fingers in his mouth.

He progressed to having oral sex. Initially, she said, she was infatuated and then got a lot of guilt.

When Mr O’Grady got a job at Limerick fire station he had to move into the city.

In the first house he moved into, she bled when he digitally penetrated her. She became hysterical as she assumed her hymen had been broken and she was no longer a virgin. Mr O’Grady’s replied: “Why do women react like that to losing their virginity?”

Asked by state prosecutor John O’Sullivan if she agreed with what Mr O’Grady did to her, she said she had, in as much as she was capable of agreeing.

She said: “There was no force or abuse, but a lot of manipulation of a child’s mind.”

She said she tried to stop it before he first touched her vagina, when she told him it was not right.

“I don’t think I came to my senses until I was 16 and took charge of it,” she said.

She was a 12-year-old girl, trying to argue with a man in his 20s, a man of the world, and a man who knew “what was what”.

The accused made her believe what was happening was all right.

“Maybe I did not fight enough, argue enough, or object enough,” she said.

Defence counsel Brendan Nix said he had to suggest Mr O’Grady did not do the things she alleged, and she replied he did the things she had described in evidence.