Taxi driver accused of sex assault on teen

A Dublin taxi driver has appeared at the Circuit Criminal Court charged with sexually assaulting a young female passenger.

The 52-year-old driver has denied two counts of sexually assaulting and two counts of falsely imprisoning a then 15-year-old girl who flagged his tax down near Donnycarney Church on Sunday, August 15, 1999.

The girl told prosecuting counsel Mr Anthony Hunt BL she had been waiting at a bus stop near the church, but had decided to take a taxi instead.

When the accused man's taxi stopped for her she got in the front passenger side and asked him to driver her to the Amabassador Cinema on Parnell Street. She told him she was meeting friends there.

The now 18-year-old girl said he had told her sometime after she got in the car that she was "a lovely looking girl" and had introduced himself to her.

He invited her to go for a drive with him and told her to call her friends and tell them she would be late meeting them.

While on Talbot Street they ran into a traffic jam and he said there would be less delay if they turned right into Gardiner Street and drove that way to Parnell Street.

She said enroute, he touched her private parts, over the trousers she was wearing, and she brushed his hand away.

Shortly afterwards, the car turned left into Parnell Street and she saw her friend's car parked on the opposite side of Amabassador Cinema, by the AIB Bank. She said she saw her friend,. whom she was to meet, in the car with her boyfriend.

The taxi driver told her he could not stop the car there and drove on, past the Ilac Centre on Parnell Street and then turned around, driving back in the direction of O'Connell Street.

She told the jury of nine men and three women that the taxi driver had then turned into a small cul-de-sac beside a parking area and had stopped the car towards the end of the laneway.

She asked him what he was doing and why he had stopped. He told her: "It will only take a while." She said she told him she did not want to be there, and he replied: "I will make it worth your while. I will give you £20."

She refused, but he reached over and put her hand on her left breast, underneath the jumper and the black vest she was wearing.

He also asked her to give him "a quick feel."

She told Mr Hunt she was very frightened at this stage and asked the man to take her to her friends. He acceeded, and she did not know how they went back onto O'Connell Street.

When they did get there she asked him how much she owed him and he told her : "You can make up for it later."

She said as he drove away she was trying to look at the license plate but could only see two digits because her friend had come over to hug her.

She told the court she had earlier seen the man's brass identity badge number pinned on his red polo pullover and had memorised the number.

In cross-examination by Mr Sean Gillane BL, counsel for the accused, she said she was "absolutely positive" about the badge number even though she had been unable to identify the man at a garda identification parade a few weeks later.

The case continues before Judge Patrick McCartan.