Two teenage boys found guilty in Limerick racecourse sex abuse case

All of the guilty verdicts by the 11-person jury were by a 10-1 majority. File picture

Two teenage boys broke down in tears in the Central Criminal Court on Tuesday as they were found guilty of their parts in the sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl in a car at Limerick Races at Christmas 2022.

One was found guilty of rape and sexual assault. The other was found guilty of aiding and abetting this accused and a third teenager was convicted on Monday of rape and sexual assault.

The teenager who was found guilty of aiding and abetting was found not guilty on another charge — that of falsely imprisoning the 16-year-old girl in the car.

All three accused will be held in detention until they come back before the court for sentencing by Mr Justice Paul McDermott on April 28.

All of the guilty verdicts by the 11-person jury were by a 10-1 majority.

One juror was discharged due to illness during the trial, which proceeded in front of a jury of nine women and two men.

The jury commenced their deliberations on Friday, April 4, and spent a total of 10 hours and 46 minutes considering their verdicts against the three accused teenagers. 

At the outset, the jurors were told in effect they were dealing with three separate trials as there were three defendants in the case.

During the closing speeches by the prosecution and the defence lawyers and in the judge’s charge to the jury, they were told in effect they should think of the case as three trials as there were three different defendants, and the cases were simply being held together as a matter of convenience when it commenced on March 11.

One of the 12 jurors sworn in on that date became ill during the trial and was discharged from hearing the case against three teenagers.

The contested incidents occurred in a car in a field car park at Limerick racecourse at Patrickswell, Co Limerick, on December 26 2022.

Defence senior counsels, Tom Creed, Vincent Heneghan and Brian McInerney, for the three defendants, said the prosecution had not reached the point of proving any of the counts beyond reasonable doubt. The defence also said by the complainant’s own account she did consent to some interaction that afternoon. They argued while the prosecution said it was consent up to a point, it was not clear where that point was.

The disputed events in the car relate to a period of somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes, the prosecution allege.

However, Dean Kelly, prosecution senior counsel, said the three defendants acted as a group in carrying out the offences with which they were charged.

Mr Kelly said: “These boys acted as a group, each of them taking what they wanted from her physically and sexually in the way they went, whether she wanted to or not.

“From the time those three boys are in the car they are acting as a single unit. [name] moves the car — he says he just wanted to go for a drive. That is inherent nonsense. It was so that whatever was going on in the car was going to be done away from prying eyes.

“This is a group working together. [name of driver] is an enthusiastic member of the group who achieves his own sexual gratification."

Mr Kelly said while there were some inconsistencies and contradictions between the accounts given by the three accused in Garda interviews, there were essentially two broad narratives in the case — one from the complainant and the other from the three accused.

He said on her account, the complainant goes to the races with her friends at the age of 16, goes drinking, gets significantly drunk, ends up in the company of the three boys and that “as an ordinary part of teenage life”, she consensually kisses the 13-year-old and consents but that her consent is only “up to a very certain point”. 

Mr Kelly said that was her narrative, “and then there is what they have to say — what they tell the gardaí in lurid technicolour… in almost pornographic terms. [In their account] within moments of entering the car she is in total control of an orgy, she is portrayed as actively sexually voracious, insatiable, controlling, demanding at every turn. That is what you are asked to consider as quite reasonably true.

“Those are the narratives in broad outline — a young girl consenting to low level intimacy, and on the other hand she is described as sexually voracious.”

Mr Justice McDermott excused the jurors from further jury service for a period of 10 years and said it was not an easy case and they had given it careful consideration, for which he thanked them.

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