Sexual assault suspect kicked in shop

A man facing trial for sexually assaulting a young girl was kicked from behind in a shop by the girl’s uncle, who called him a walking dead man.

The man, who is facing the sex assault trial, made a complaint to gardaí that he had been assaulted, and the girl’s uncle was yesterday convicted and fined €300 for assault.

The parties in the case are not identified for legal reasons.

The defendant denied assaulting the other man at a shop in Wilton shopping centre.

Garda Brian White showed CCTV from the shop on the day in question, April 18, 2014, which appeared to show the defendant kicking the complainant in the calf from behind.

The accused testified at Cork District Court yesterday that he tapped the other man in the leg, just to get his attention and said: “If he thinks he is going to do this [alleged sexual offences] without being confronted.”

The accused said he did refer to him as “a walking dead man”.

However, he said in court yesterday that this was not a threat and it was just the reality for someone in prison in relation to sexual charges.

He said sex offenders were kept segregated from the general prison population because of the attitude of other prisoners to them.

“If they were in the mainstream prison, they wouldn’t last an hour,” he said.

While he denied the charge of assaulting him, he accepted that it was him in the CCTV and that he did confront the other man.

Inspector Pat Meaney said the accused had taken the law into his own hands.

Judge Olann Kelleher convicted him and repeated that he had taken the law into his own hands.

Defence solicitor Joseph Cuddigan said: “This is his first ever assault conviction in circumstances that were quite extraordinary.

Judge Kelleher said he appreciated that the assault was technical in nature but he said people could not go around taking the law into their own hands.

He convicted and fined the accused €300 for the assault.

The defendant said he wanted to see the other man put on trial for on the sexual assault charges and he respected the process and did not believe that anything he had done at the shop on that day had done anything to damage that process.

Garda White said that he called to the home of the defendant and put to him the complaint that he had assaulted the other man at the shop.

Garda White said the defendant was very polite with the gardaí but said he did not want to make any statement in relation to the complaint against him.