A man who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in a cinema has been jailed for 18 months by Judge Kevin Haugh at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Remus Cioroiu (31), a schoolteacher with an address at Elgin Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, pleaded guilty to four charges of sexually assaulting the girl between September and November 1997.
He says he was oppressed in Romania because of his membership of a minority religious group, the Seventh Day Adventists.
He had a letter for the court expressing his remorse at his actions and apologising to the victim and her family.
Det Garda Mary Sharkey told Mr Adrian Mannering, prosecuting, that Cioroiu first met the victim casually and introduced himself to her as a Romanian schoolteacher who wanted to improve his English. He drove past her a few days later in the street and shouted: "I think I love you."
The girl and her best friend met Cioroiu regularly after that in a nearby park and worked through English grammar texts with him. Det Garda Sharkey said the first assault was in a cinema.
She told him to stop but he would not. The second assault happened when Cioroiu met her on her way home from school and drove her to a car-park and the third and fourth assaults happened in the home of the victim's aunt.
Det Garda Sharkey said Cioroiu was an asylum-seeker since he arrived in Ireland on the back of a lorry from Italy in 1996. His application was refused in December, and he had appealed that.
She agreed with Mr Brendan Grehan, defending, that the girl was at times flattered by Cioroiu's attention and was somewhat compliant by contacting him on his mobile phone and meeting him. She invited him to the house, where the fourth assault took place and waited on the doorstep for him to arrive. The situation was uncovered because a neighbour saw him arriving.
Mr Grehan said Cioriou told gardai he believed the girl was 16 years old. He had made reference to her stating her age and he believed her until her mother asked whether he realised she was only 14. Judge Haugh said he was solely concerned with the charges and not other matters. He must give Cioroiu the benefit of the doubt when it came to his realising she was just 14 years. He said it must be hard for a foreign national to serve a sentence in a strange country and sentenced him to 18 months dating from June 15th, 1998.