A CONVICTED arsonist has been found guilty by a Central Criminal Court jury of raping a nine-year-old girl twice on a beach and orally raping her in a Dublin house 16 years ago.
Stephen (Rossi) Walsh (62) of Belgrave Road, Rathgar, previously of the Rinsgend/Pearse Street area of Dublin, had been convicted in the Special Criminal Court of arson in the early 1990s.
Mr Justice Paul Carney remanded Walsh in custody and adjourned sentencing to next February. He thanked the jurors for their service and excused them from jury duty for life.
This was the last criminal trial to be heard in the Four Courts complex. All new Dublin cases will be dealt with in the new Criminal Courts of Justice building from next January.
Pleas of not guilty had been entered by the court on behalf Walsh, to two counts of rape, one count of oral rape and one count of sexual assault on dates between January 1st and November 9th, 1993, after he refused to indicate whether he was pleading guilty or not guilty to the offences.
The jury took almost seven hours to reach the verdict on day four of the trial. It acquitted Walsh on one count of sexual assault.
Mr Justice Carney declared Walsh a sex offender and ordered a victim impact report for the sentence hearing.
Insp Colm O’Malley was called to give evidence of Walsh’s character and previous convictions because Mr Justice Carney said he wanted the jury to know “who they had been dealing with and what had been kept from them”.
Insp O’Malley confirmed that Walsh had 13 previous convictions including a lengthy prison sentence in relation to an arson case, which Mr Justice Carney confirmed had been dealt with in the Special Criminal Court. He did not have an official record of convictions in court and the judge confirmed Walsh’s full record would be outlined in detail at the sentence hearing. Walsh also had a number of convictions for minor road traffic offences that had been dealt with in the District Court.
Earlier, the now 25-year-old woman told Isobel Kennedy, prosecuting, that Walsh would regularly call to her home to visit and on four occasions he took her off in his car telling her they were going to visit his daughter.
She said on one occasion he brought her to a nearby beach and he asked her to play a game of hide and seek and directed her to go behind some nearby rocks.
She said Walsh then found her, came up behind her and sexually assaulted her after taking her tracksuit bottoms and underwear down. She told the jury he raped her on two occasions on the same strand after again telling her to go and hide.
The woman also said Walsh forced her into oral sex by playing a “game” for which she was blindfolded. She said Walsh put things in her mouth and asked her to “guess the fruit or veg”.
The woman told the jury that on each occasion, Walsh threatened to “get” her and her parents if she told anyone what had happened.