Lawyer accuses young Corkman of making up paedophilia allegations against mother's ex

When asked about "minimising" the allegations, the young man said "he would follow us around, I was scared of him".

Brief evidence was given by a youth worker that the last witness disclosed to him that the defendant allegedly interfered with him when he was aged around 7, 8 or 9, when he was showering after sports training. File photo: Larry Cummins 

A defence lawyer accused a young man of making allegations of rape and paedophilia against his mother’s ex-partner because he hated him, but the witness said the only reason he disliked him was because of his actions against him.

This occurred at a trial at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork on Tuesday before Mr Justice Michael McGrath and a jury of five women and seven men.

The accused man faces a total of 59 charges, including two counts of raping his then-partner, “numerous counts of sexually assaulting her”, and cruelty to her three children. The defendant is also charged with sexually assaulting his partner’s son. The accused man has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.

The son of the ex-partner of the defendant was cross-examined by defence senior counsel Tom Creed. Mr Creed said the witness was making spurious allegations at a time when the accused man was applying to a court to get access to his children following a break-up with his then-partner. 

Mr Creed accused the witness of lying. The witness replied:

I have no reason to lie. What would be my purpose of making allegations against him?

Mr Creed went through the memo of an interview the accused gave with a specialist garda interviewer where the defence senior counsel said it was a very comfortable setting designed so that a witness would not feel pressured, and that in this setting he described alleged actions by the defendant as being much less than he was alleging from the witness box. 

Mr Creed asked the witness if he lied to the specialist interviewer. “I did not really lie. I took the truth and made it less. I minimised what happened to me because I was scared,” he said.

Mr Creed SC said: “And now you are explaining it away.” The young man replied: “I am not explaining it away, I am explaining myself. There is a difference.” 

The witness agreed that he told the principal of his school and a doctor that his mother’s partner (the defendant) scratched his arm but later made a statement retracting this saying he was just cross with the defendant for not letting him go to his friend’s birthday party on the same day as his sister’s birthday.

Prosecution senior counsel, Shane Costelloe, re-examined the witness and asked him why he retracted his statement that the accused man caused the injury. He replied that he did so because the defendant “had threatened me I would go into care – me and my brothers and sisters. I was 11. 

He told me that social workers would take us away – they would take my siblings away.

He said the defendant told him: “’You could change your story, fairly lively’. So I said I would change my story. I fully believed I would never see my siblings, never see my mother again.” 

Asked again about his evidence about "minimising" the allegations he made against the defendant to the specialist interviewers, he said he was afraid of the defendant even when he was no longer living with him.

“He parked outside my mother’s house. If my mother was in town shopping he would follow her, he would follow us around, I was scared of him. I thought if I made it look less severe, made it look less than it actually was, he would maybe leave us alone.” 

Brief evidence was given by a youth worker that the last witness disclosed to him that the defendant allegedly interfered with him when he was aged around 7, 8 or 9, when he was showering after sports training, and another alleged incident when the defendant was allegedly in his (the boy’s) bedroom when he (the boy) had his pyjama pants down and that his mother arrived in the room.

The trial continues.