Jury sent home in trial of man accused of indecent assault on daughter

A jury in the trial of a man accused of indecently assaulting his daughter in a car in Co Kildare has been sent home for the night after failing to reach a verdict.

The 62-year-old Carlow resident, who can not be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four counts of indecent assault against his daughter in Co Kildare on dates between November 1981 and March 1984.

Judge Frank O’Donnell sent the jury of nine men and three women home after they had been deliberating for almost 40 minutes and asked them to return tomorrow morning to resume their deliberations.

Earlier Detective Garda Murt Whelan told Mr Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, that he became involved in the case in January 2001 when he took a statement from the complainant. He said he arrested the accused on May 3, 2001 and interviewed him over 12 hours detention about the allegations.

Det Gda Whelan said the accused made no admissions in relation to the abuse.

He agreed with defence counsel, Mr Michael O’Higgins SC, that at the time he had never investigated a case of historical sex abuse but said he had investigated other cases of sexual abuse before.

He told Mr O’Higgins that he had put as much detail as he could elicit from the witnesses into the statements and had asked them questions by way of clarification.

He denied that the statements he had taken from the witnesses about the family argument in which it was alleged the accused admitted sexually abusing the complainant were “woefully inadequate”.

“I don‘t believe the evidence before the court differs greatly from that in the statements,” said Det Gda Whelan.

He agreed with Mr O’Higgins that the accused “firmly and robustly” denied the allegations during garda interview.

Det Gda Whelan agreed that similar allegations had been the subject of a number of indictments which had been heard before the courts and in which verdicts of not guilty had been ultimately returned.

He agreed that there had been a concern about a grand daughter of the accused but that she had come to court on a different occasion and given evidence that she had not been abused.