Jury finds Donegal man (40s) not guilty of sexual assault

A Donegal man has been cleared of sexually assaulting a woman following a trial at Letterkenny Circuit Court.

The man, who is in his 40s and cannot be named for legal reasons, faced the judge and jury for a trial that lasted over three days.

A jury of nine men and three women found the accused man not guilty.

The man faced a single count of sexual assault, contrary to the Criminal Law (Rape) Act 1990, as amended by section 37 of the Sex Offenders Act, 2001. 

The man was accused of sexually assaulting a woman by digitally penetrating her vagina at a location in County Donegal on a date in 2018.

Due to the nature of the charge, the trial was held in camera at Letterkenny courthouse before Judge John Aylmer.

At the time of the alleged incident, the man was in his late 30s and the complainant was in her early 20s.

After deliberating for three hours and 50 minutes, the jury returned a not guilty verdict in respect of the sole charge of sexual assault. 

The jury were brought back initially after two and a half hours and told by Judge Aylmer that a majority verdict would be accepted. While the verdict was not unanimous, at least 10 of the jurors agreed on the not guilty verdict. 

A man who accompanied the complainant for the duration of the trial shouted “you’ve made a mistake” towards the jury box as he exited the court. 

The woman told State Barrister Ms Fiona Crawford BL that, after she had a group of friends returned to a house following a night out, she went to a sitting room and lay down on a sofa.

She said the accused man followed her and asked if she would like to sleep in another room - something she said the man was “insisting”.

The woman fell asleep on the sofa, but told the court that she woke up to the man with his fingers inside her vagina.

She told Ms Crawford that she was “100% sure” it was the accused man.

She said: “I seen his face. He was staring back at me.” 

The woman said she felt “petrified” and asked the man where a friend was. She said the man went to another room to get her friend, “but I knew that wasn’t going to happen”.

“I just lay there, paralysed with fear,” she said. “I couldn’t get myself up. I just froze.”

She added that she was sleeping but “can’t say for sure if I went into a deep sleep…I was dozing; I wasn’t in a full sleep and then I woke. I woke to being touched. I was wearing a skirt and he pushed my pants to the one side.”

She said the man was “standing over the top of me” before he pulled his hand away and slid it down her leg. Although the room was dark, she told Gardai that she “knew for 100%” that it was the accused man.

She said she went into another room and the defendant was the first person she saw. She said she grabbed her friend tightly by the arm and left the room.

“My legs went to jelly when we went into the sitting room,” she said. “I felt like I was having a panic attack.”

The two left and went to another house before phoning the complainant’s brother. 

A detective told how a 999 call initially came in at 6.57am on the day in question and he arrived at the scene before taking statements from the complainant and her friend. 

The accused man was arrested and denied any involvement in the allegations made when questioned by detectives. 

A nurse from the Donegal Sexual Assault Treatment Unit (SATU) gave evidence of carrying out an examination on the complainant seven hours after the alleged assault. 

The nurse told how she detected no abnormal findings. Two samples of blood and urine were taken.

The woman had told the SATU nurse: “It was the scariest, scariest ever”. In relation to the identity of her alleged assailant, she told the nurse: “The room was dark, but I knew 100 per cent that it was him.”

Under cross examination from Mr Peter Nolan BL, barrister for the accused man, the woman recalled that she had a can of alcohol in a friend’s house. She said she had another drink in a pub before they went to a nightclub.

The woman told Mr Nolan how the friends met up in the car park before returning to the house.

“You were inebriated and you had a lot of drink taken before you arrived at the house,” Mr Nolan said. The woman replied: “I had drink taken. I was not drunk.”

Mr Nolan queried why the woman did not raise the alarm by screaming.

“You know what, as much as I wanted to scream and shout and get out of there, there was just no physical way I could even get the words out,” the woman said. “I froze. I was petrified. I was so petrified I couldn’t speak, never mind scream.”

The woman told Mr Nolan that she was “100% laying on my back” and that her skirt was moved at the time of the alleged incident.

Mr Nolan put it to the woman that she had a “golden opportunity” to cry for help when the man left the room.

“I couldn’t even talk,” she said, adding that it was a relative who made the phone call to the Gardai.

Mr Nolan suggested to the woman that she was intoxicated and that her description of how the incident happened “could not have happened in the manner you say”.

The complainant replied that she had “no doubt in my mind that this did happen” and added: “No doubt in my mind at all”.

A friend of the woman described the complainant as having seemed “like a scared child” when she raised the alarm to her.

In closing, Mr Nolan told the jury that: “This man cannot be found guilty”.

He said the woman was drunk which was of “vital importance”.

“I say that it simply doesn’t make any sense, given the geography of the house, that any would take such a risk as my client is alleged to have,” Mr Nolan said. “It simply couldn’t have happened in the manner described. It’s impossible. This is a witness who doesn’t even know if she was asleep.

“We had a small house, which was full to the gills at party time and here he is allegedly doing this to this lady. There are too many ifs, buts and maybes.”