Trial continues of man accused of abusing girls in pub

A teenager who alleges she was repeatedly sexually abused from the age of eight by a barman in a Co Mayo pub has told a Central Criminal Court jury that she kept going back because she was getting alcohol and cigarettes.

The now 19-year-old girl claims she and her best friend were sexually assaulted and orally raped by the man for up to a year and that she kept returning to the pub because she was “addicted” to cigarettes and alcohol.

The accused man, who can not be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of sexual assault and 13 counts of oral rape against one girl; also 14 counts of sexual assault, 13 counts of oral rape and one count of anal rape against the second child on dates between June 1999 and September 2000.

The girls were between eight and 10 years old at the time of the alleged offences.

The first complainant, who is now 19 years old, told Ms Deirdre Murphy SC, prosecuting, that in 1999 she and her best friend used to go to her mother’s work place after school and would use the toilet in a nearby bar when they needed to and sometimes watched cartoons there.

She said one day when she was about eight the accused man, who worked in the bar, exposed himself to the two girls before showing them how to masturbate him.

She said they continued to go back about three days a week to masturbate the man and a few weeks later this developed into oral sex which he also showed them how to do.

She said the abuse would go on in a lounge in the pub and if people came into the bar they would have to go into the toilets until he would flicker the lights for them to come out.

Before they left the accused man would give them money, cigarettes or alcohol. She said he would give them a pound coin or sometimes a five pound note.

She said they would go over to the shop afterwards and buy chewing gum or sweets.

She said he sometimes asked them to perform “full sex” or anal sex. She said she refused but he had anal sex with her friend on one occasion. She said her friend was scared and “whinging”. She said her friend was saying it was sore and she did not remember how it ended.

The complainant said on one occasion she brought a different friend to the toilet with her in the pub. She said while her friend went into a cubicle she masturbated the accused in the toilet.

She said she had kept going back to the pub because she was “addicted” to cigarettes and alcohol.

She said the abuse stopped after an incident where she had gone into the pub by herself to use the toilet. The accused allegedly grabbed and squeezed her then put his hand down her trousers but let her go when someone came in and she ran away.

She said the accused had been becoming more aggressive towards them and she stopped going to the pub.

She agreed with defence counsel, Mr Patrick Gageby SC (with Mr Eoin Garavan BL), that as a child she and her friend would be in the pub up to three times a week and maybe more. She said the accused was able to look from where they were abused through a glass part of a door to see if people were coming into the pub.

She disagreed that she would have been “quite drunk" if she had up to two glasses of cider after the abuse as she claimed in her evidence. She agreed she would have been going back to her mother or to her friend's house for tea after drinking and smoking for a good part of a year.

She initially told Mr Gageby that she did not remember or want to make any comment about an incident where she was alleged to have stolen money. She later agreed that the person involved had agreed not to go to the gardaí if she paid the money back.

She agreed she also made a statement to the gardaí about another incident but later admitted to the gardaí she was not telling the whole truth about what happened.

She denied a suggestion by Mr Gageby that nothing indecent had happened and said “I would never lie about something so disgusting.”

The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of six men and six women.