Alleged victim accused of delusions

The lawyer for a north Cork doctor accused of sexually assaulting a teenager told a jury they were being asked to believe a woman who once thought she was pregnant with the baby Jesus by immaculate conception.

Defence SC Blaise O’Carroll said the woman was once so fixed in that view that she insisted on a pregnancy test.

Kevin Mulcahy, age 57, of Lombardstown, Mallow, Co Cork, pleaded not guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to charges of sexually assaulting the woman at his surgery when she was a patient aged 17/18. She is now in her mid-thirties.

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Mr O’Carroll said in his address to the jury yesterday: “You are mindful of the delusional disorder when she travelled [abroad]. She was brought to hospital in London when found by members of the Metropolitan police.

“The nature of what she was saying was she was in the family way bringing the baby Jesus into the world, that it was an immaculate conception and the Muslims were at her genital area.

“She now accepts it was a delusion. Is the claim against Dr Mulcahy a delusion or reality?”

Prosecution barrister Donal McCarthy told the jury yesterday there was psychiatric evidence before them that the complaints in this case were not the consequence of a delusional state the woman experienced several years ago.

Mr McCarthy said it was not a case where people’s memory was different. He said both complainant and accused testified that they remembered the time in question, she said the sexual assaults happened, he said they did not, and that it was a matter for the jury to decide.

The woman described an occasion where Dr Mulcahy got wet at the front of his green tracksuit and appeared to have ejaculated.

Dr Mulcahy replied: “First of all I did not ever have a green tracksuit. And if I was in surgery, I was in proper attire. And it absolutely never happened.”

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