Jury fails to reach verdict in sexual assault case

A jury has failed to agree on a verdict in the case of a Donegal man accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a house party in the county.

A trial was held before Judge John Aylmer and a jury of eight men and three women at Letterkenny Circuit Court.

Evidence was heard over the course of three days and, on the fourth day of the trial, the jury deliberated for four hours and 57 minutes before the foreperson told Judge John Aylmer that they were not hopeful of arriving at a verdict.

Judge Aylmer noted it as a disagreement, that the jury was unable to reach a verdict and adjourned the matter until the next sitting of Letterkenny Circuit Court, which commences on June 20.The man, aged in his 40s, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman on a date in 2018 by digitally penetrating her vagina.

A Garda gave evidence of receiving a 999 call regarding a sexual incident at 6.57am on the day in question.

Gardai accompanied the woman to the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit, where she was assessed.

The accused man gave a statement by arrangement to Gardai in November 2018. He said he noticed the woman sleeping ‘in an uncomfortable position’. The room was cold, he said, and so he shook her shoulder gently and offered that she could sleep in a vacant upstairs room.

The man told Gardai he was in ‘complete shock’ at the allegation and he ‘rejected and refuted’ any suggestion that he sexually assaulted the woman. He said he became aware of the allegations ‘via rumours’ around two or three months after the date on which the incident was alleged.

The court heard that the woman was socialising from around 7pm and she went to a nightclub with friends later in the night.

After leaving the nightclub, the group retired to a house. Seven people were said to have been in the house, with the group located in the kitchen.

The woman said she left the kitchen and lay on the sofa, where she fell asleep. The woman told the court that, when she woke up, the accused had his fingers inserted into her vagina.

Ms Patricia McLaughlin BL, prosecuting, said the woman was ‘very shocked’ when she woke up. She said the blanket and her skirt were pulled up and her underwear had been moved over.

She said the man stood ‘very still’ and ‘removed his hand very carefully’ when the woman woke up.

“I felt absolutely petrified,” the woman told the court. “I was that scared, I felt paralysed from the neck down. I couldn’t move.”

The woman said she initially fell to the floor and her ‘legs were like jelly’. She went to get a friend from the kitchen and they left the house.

“I was in real shock and absolutely petrified,” she said.

The other female, who accompanied the complainant on leaving the house, gave evidence and said she felt ‘scared and sad’ seeing her friend in such a distressed state.

“She was shaking, she was almost rocking,” the witness said.

Under cross examination from Mr Peter Nolan BL, for the accused, the complainant said she was laying on the sofa on her back. Mr Nolan put it to the woman that if anyone had attempted to sexually assault anyone in the house ‘it would almost certainly lead to being caught’.

“It would have been crazy to do that,” Mr Nolan said.

The woman said: “I can’t show x-rays. I can’t show scars.”

Mr Nolan asked the woman why she had not mentioned the alleged incident to a psychiatrist in November, 2018, but had mentioned ‘other trauma’. The woman said she had been to counseling at the Rape Crisis Centre.

“I wasn’t ready to speak about it then,” she said. When pressed by Mr Nolan about not mentioning to Gardai that her skirt had been pulled up in an interview, the woman said: “At time of explaining, that part of the statement was very difficult, maybe I just didn’t mention it.”

Ms McLaughlin said there were ‘two diametrical different versions of what happened’. She said an expert witness had given evidence that the level of alcohol in the woman’s system was below the legal limit for driving.

“She has a very clear recollection from the start of the night all the way through,” Ms McLaughlin said.

“She dealt with this in a way she felt was best and there is no handbook on how to react to a traumatic event. She went and got the one person in the house who she trusted. Just because she didn’t cry or scream immediately is of no consequence."

Ms McLaughlin said the woman was a ‘very credible’ witness who gave ‘an entirely authentic and truthful account’.

Mr Nolan said that his client came to court an innocent man and had been ‘entirely and utterly consistent’ with his statements. The accused man was not called to give evidence in court.

He said if the jury accepted an account that the woman was laying on her side then it was ‘absolutely impossible for any sexual assault’. “If you accept that, put the can in the bin,” Mr Nolan told the jury.

“If you are in danger, you can fight or you can flight,” he said. “What does she do? She does neither. She sat there, playing possum. It just doesn’t make sense.

“The first thing is, physically how could it have happened? The second thing is the darkness of the room - how could she see his eyes? How could she see what was going on? None of it adds up.

“There are too many inconsistencies. She was disorientated, she woke up and she came to a conclusion.”

Mr Nolan told the jury that it would be “entirely and utterly unsafe to convict on the ‘I don’t know, I’m not sure’-type of evidence’.”