A 26-year-old man who sexually assaulted some 15 children when they were aged between two and eight years old has been remanded in custody to allow an assessment by social workers on the impact of the abuse on his victims.
Kevin Scully, Glounaphuca, Caheragh, Drimoleague, Co Cork,appeared at Cork Circuit Criminal Court yesterday after earlier pleading guilty to a total of 16 sample counts of sexually assaulting the 10 girls and five boys between April 1997 and June 2000.
Scully was aged between 15 and 17 at the time of the sexual assaults which consisted in the main of digital penetration, masturbation and performing oral sex.
Some of the victims were assaulted just once and others were assaulted on multiple occasions.
Det Garda Bart O’Leary told the court the investigation was launched after a three-year-old girl told her mother that Scully had interfered with her and the mother found blood on her daughter’s underwear and an internal examination revealed she had a slight scar on her urethra.
The girl was brought to the Sexual Assault Examination Unit at the South Infirmary Victoria Hospital and doctors there alerted social workers in the then Southern Health Board. They notified gardaí who launched an investigation.
Gardaí arrested Scully on April 29th, 2000, and he admitted sexually assaulting the girl and eight other girls aged between two and eight years. During a second arrest on May 23rd, 2000, he admitted sexually assaulting six more girls and seven boys.
Scully was first charged with the offences in the summer of July 2000 when the district court judge ordered a psychiatric assessment and the then SHB subsequently found a place for him in a residential treatment centre at Glebe House in Cambridgeshire in the UK.
Scully spent more than two years there at a cost of some £280,000. While the initial evaluation was positive, those running the centre deemed that he ultimately had not benefited from the treatment, said Det Garda O’Leary.
Scully came back to Ireland and was returned for trial in November 2002 but a jury after hearing medical evidence from both the State and defence deemed him unfit to plead and he was detained at the Central Mental Hospital.
However, following a change in the legislation in 2006, he was again assessed by psychiatrists for both the prosecution and defence and deemed fit to stand trial whereupon he pleaded guilty in March 2008 and has been remanded in custody ever since, said Det Garda O’Leary.
Det Garda O’Leary said while Scully had co-operated fully with gardaí, he believed on the basis of reports from both Glebe House and the Central Mental Hospital that he was at the high level of risk as regards reoffending.
He would also have serious concerns for Scully’s safety if he returned to west Cork as relatives of some of his victims were very angry and had made threats against him when they were interviewed by gardaí about how their children had been abused.
Det Garda O’Leary said some of the parents didn’t want to make victim impact statements as they were hoping their children were too young to remember it while others felt it was too early to assess if the sexual abuse had any effect on them.
Judge Patrick Moran said he felt that he needed some professional assistance from child social workers to try and gauge the effect of the abuse on the children and adjourned the matter until February 9th to allow assessment to be carried out on the victims.