A 46-YEAR-OLD man who had sex with a 14-year-old girl with whom he had been exchanging “hundreds” of texts has been given a six-year sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Following a seven-day trial last June, the man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was found guilty by a jury of sexually assaulting the girl at his home in July 2004.
Judge Desmond Hogan said he had to take account of the man’s age relative to his victim and said he “had little doubt that the man knew where this was going and should have in the early days desisted from this kind of conduct”.
The man gave the girl alcohol and dropped her some distance from her home in a drunken state after having sex with her.
Judge Hogan imposed a six-year sentence with the final two years suspended.
Garda Keith Morrisey told Paul Greene, prosecuting, that the two got to know each other when he started working near her home. He said there was daily contact between them and phone calls and text messages “numbering in the hundreds” were exchanged in both directions. Garda Morrisey agreed with defence counsel Giollaíosa Ó Lideadha that the man had co-operated with gardaí.
Mr Ó Lideadha said the man was initially charged with unlawful carnal knowledge. He was charged with sexual assault after that legislation was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.