Man convicted of sexual assault on 1-year-old

A Clare man has been convicted of sexually assaulting a one-year-old girl 10 years ago.

The 45-year-old man had pleaded not guilty in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexual assault in Co Clare between April 2005 and October 2006.

The man was previously sentenced to 12 years for sexually abusing two girls. He will be sentenced in April on this new conviction.

After a three-day trial, a jury returned a majority guilty verdict after deliberating for nearly four hours.

During the trial, Anne Rowland, prosecuting, told the jury that the victim’s sister, who was aged 10 at the time of the incident, was the main witness in the case.

She told the court how the victim and her siblings had been living in “extremely difficult” circumstances at the time. Their parents were heavy drinkers and the children would often go hungry and the house would have no heat or electricity.

The court heard that when the baby was brought home from hospital, she was handed to her older sister to be looked after so the parents could go drinking.

The victim’s sister, now 19, told Geraldine Fitzpatrick, defending, that the abuser knew the family and would often arrive at the house extremely drunk and fall asleep in a chair. He would sometimes be left alone in the house to keep an eye on the children.

The man was arrested on July 26, 2011, and denied the allegations when questioned by gardaí.

The court heard that the child’s foster mother brought her to be examined by a consultant paediatrician in July 2011.

This doctor found skin tags in the baby’s behind that were the result of a healed fissure.

She told the court that the position of the tags were “likely to have been a result of trauma”.

Judge Sarah Berkley remanded the man in custody for sentencing on April 14.