Rape accused said 'I can't deny it happened', trial hears

A retired garda sergeant has revealed the Wicklow businessman accused of raping and indecently assaulting a schoolgirl over 30 years ago told him he couldn’t deny the allegations when arrested.

The retired officer said he noted the man to say: “I can’t deny it happened”, and “I can’t very well deny this happened but I want to talk to my solicitor,” before he was accompanied to the local garda station.

The witness said the man had told him earlier that he wasn’t surprised to see gardaí call to his home as he’d had a couple of phone calls from the complainant a month before the arrest in September 1997.

The 58-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to 18 rape charges and 19 indecent assault charges from January 1979 to June 1983 at various Wicklow locations when the girl was aged between 12 and 17-years-old.

The retired garda sergeant told Mr Tom O’Connell SC, prosecuting (with Ms Monica Lawlor BL), that he had called to the accused’s home with two colleagues in September 1997 to arrest him on foot of the complainant’s allegations.

He said the man told him he wasn’t surprised as the complainant had phoned him about a month previously.

The witness revealed the accused then asked to change his clothes, went up to his bedroom and said: “I can’t deny it happened”.

The witness told Mr O’Connell that the accused man then said: “I can’t very well deny this happened but I want to talk to my solicitor.”

He said the notes of this conversation were read over to him at the garda station a short time later but that he refused to sign the document.

The retired garda sergeant said the accused later passed his interviewers a handwritten note in the presence of his solicitor to say the allegations were “completely untrue”.

He said the man recalled details of the earlier phone conversation he had had with the complainant, in which he alleges she told him he would be hearing from her.

The retired garda sergeant agreed with Ms Mary Rose Gearty SC, defending (with Ms Siobhán Ní Chúlacháin BL), that he was relying on notes in the witness box but denied it was because he couldn’t now recall the day of the arrest and interview.

He said he was sure a colleague had accompanied him into the bedroom with the accused.

Ms Gearty put it to the witness that this colleague had said in a 1997 statement that he remained outside the bedroom while the accused changed clothes.

Ms Gearty put it to him that the notebook entry was recorded in past tense and suggested that he wrote his notes after arriving at the garda station.

The witness denied this, stating that he had taken down the accused’s words as he said them. He agreed he interpreted the words as admissions to the allegations.

He further agreed he later told the accused’s solicitor that the accused had said a couple of things to him which “might” be important in the investigation.

A retired detective garda told Mr O’Connell that he had briefly stepped into the accused’s bedroom but then remained outside with another colleague as his superior spoke with the businessman.

The witness said he heard what the accused told his superior inside the room and that he later heard the accused “breath the word ‘correct’” when the garda sergeant read over the conversation notes, though he refused to sign the entry.

The man told Ms Gearty that he hadn’t felt it necessary to mention stepping inside the accused’s bedroom when counsel put it to him that he omitted this detail in a 1997 statement.

He said he saw the garda sergeant take notes when the accused “out of the blue” said: “I can’t deny it happened.”

The retired detective garda told Ms Gearty he was “shocked to hear (the accused) say those words completely out of the blue”.

The prosecution case has closed before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of six men and six women.