Paedophile Lombard jailed for further seven years

A predatory paedophile who sexually assaulted a ten-year-old girl in Cork city after he absconded from a sex abuse trial is facing 12 years in prison after he was convicted by a jury today.

James Lombard was subject of a major manhunt when he assaulted the young girl as she was on her way home from mass last February. Her mother had asked her to pop up to the local shop to pick up the previous night’s lottery numbers.

She had the misfortune to meet Lombard who duped her into helping him to find a missing dog, but then stripped and sexually assaulted her.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said: “You abused her innocence, you abused her family life in a well-planned, conniving and overbearing way. The bottom line is you are a danger to society.

“Whatever demons are inhabiting your person are still there raging unattended to. There is no effort by you to attend to the fault that is in you.

“It is hard to put words on it, you are on trial on similar charges dating back to the early 1990’s, you abscond, you are on bail on other charges. Before you are arrested you commit this offence. It almost beggars belief.

"You are a risk to innocent vulnerable children. The only thing in your favour is that you pleaded guilty.”

The judge then imposed a seven-year sentence on Lombard for the assault of the ten-year-old girl on February 20.

That sentence was made consecutive to a five year sentence imposed on him last May for sex attacks on children as young as four years of age in the toilets of fast food outlets, public swimming pools and playing fields over ten years ago.

Detective Sergeant Declan O’Sullivan said the case before the court today arose from a situation where Lombard duped the girl into looking for a dog and then went on to the grounds of a convent.

“In the garden area of the convent, he changed his story. He said he was a doctor and that he would examine her. He removed her boots, pants and underwear. He attempted to put his hands between her legs. She resisted and threatened to tell on him if he did not let her go. He left at that point.

"The injured party put on her clothes, put her underwear in her pocket and ran home and told her mother who called the gardaí,” Det. Sgt O’Sullivan said.