A MAN was camped at the foot of a mountain near a family home during one of the harshest winters in years because he had an “emotional attachment to an innocent eight-year-old girl,” a senior garda in Kerry told a special court sitting yesterday.
The special sitting of Killarney District Court to deal with two charges against Hubert Noditza (33), originally from Normandy in France, also heard of a number of text messages sent from Noditza’s mobile phone to the phone of the mother of the girl detailing his love for the child, who was then eight years old, and his plans to marry her.
Noditza, of no fixed abode, was brought in custody before yesterday’s court, he was remanded from an earlier sitting.
Through his solicitor Pádraig O’Connell, he pleaded not guilty to a charge of trespass on the night of January 1st, 2010, when it was alleged he was found to be looking in a window while the child was playing a computer game with other family members in a bedroom of the family’s home near while the parents were out.
He also denied the charge of assault causing harm to the girl’s father when he was found in the family property in the early hours of February 13th, 2010.
In evidence yesterday, the father of the child told how he found him outside the bedroom window in January and Noditza made “a very strong declaration” that he loved his daughter, the child’s father told the court.
The man said he had invited Noditza to their home in May 2009 and he had stayed with the family, mostly in a caravan, near their house.
However, they asked him to leave after two weeks and he had done so in July 2009. The child’s father said he had become a nuisance and “he had no apparent restraint when it came to personal barriers”.
The father read out transcripts of mobile phone messages sent to the family.
Beginning in November 2009, the child’s mother received a number of text messages from him.
One of the messages said the child was “the only one with whom I felt like living forever”, another text message accused her parents of seeking to make him “go away before [name of child] and I are really married forever”.
Noditza, speaking to the court through an interpreter, strongly denied he had sent the texts.
Cross-examining Noditza, Insp Barry O’Rourke put it to him that he had said he “loved” the “innocent child”. Noditza replied he had said that but he had meant that he did not want to hurt her.
When pressed on the matter of his declaration of love he said: “Yes, but not in a bad way.”
“In reality your preference is for little girls,” Insp O’Rourke put it to him, adding that Noditza was “sexually attracted to children”.
“You are a paedophile and you have been rumbled,” the inspector continued.
However, Noditza strongly denied this saying: “No, I never had sex with any child.”
Judge James O’Connor convicted Noditza on both counts, imposing a seven-month sentence on the charge of trespass, and nine month sentence on the charge of of assault causing harm.
The sentences were to run consecutively.
However, Judge O’Connor suspended the 16-month jail sentence after Noditza voluntarily agreed to leave the Republic in the next 24 hours and not to return until March 2019 when the girl would be 18.
He also undertook not to make any contact by any means with her family.