A 30-year old man has been jailed for 16 months for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in the early hours of Christmas morning.
Judge Francis Comerford imposed a 26-month sentence with the final 10 months suspended on Nitish Kalia, an Indian national, at Ennis Circuit Court on Thursday.
Kalia, formerly of Susanville Road in Drumcondra, Dublin 9, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the child on December 25th, 2018. The court heard he was staying with the family as a guest in Co Clare over Christmas and made contact with the girl on the Tik-Tok social media platform.
Judge Comerford said it was serious crime and that a child should be safe in her own house on Christmas morning. He praised the bravery of the girl who was in court for the sentencing hearing.
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In her victim impact statement, the girl addressed Mr Kalia, stating: “I hope this was your first and last time doing something like this.
“I hope that if you have a daughter in years to come that no one treats her like what you did to me.”
‘Bad dream’
The girl said she used to count down the days to Christmas but now “every Christmas brings back the bad dream that I can’t get rid of”.
Det Garda Conor Flaherty said that in the early hours, Kalia sent a message to the girl asking if he could come into her bedroom and that she said no. He said Kalia entered the room anyway and got into a bed that the girl was sharing with her younger brother.
The detective said the girl explained that the sexual assault continued for 20 minutes and consisted of the man touching three separate areas of her body outside her clothing. The girl sent a message to her mother while Kalia was in the room but she did not immediately wake.
When her mother woke up, she saw the messages and ran to her daughter’s room before ejecting Kalia from the property.
Kalia - who will be now placed on the sex offenders’ register - has no previous convictions and was in Ireland to study at Griffith College in Dublin. Det Flaherty said Kalia’s student visa expired in 2020 and he has no status in the State. He has agreed not to contest any deportation proceedings on his release from prison.