A Galway man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with orally raping and sexually assaulting a then teenage boy in the city 14 years ago.
The 52-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty to two charges of oral rape, one of attempted buggery and eight of indecent assault on dates from July 1989 to July 1991 at public toilets on Eyre Square, Ceannt Station and the Bridge Mills.
Mr Tom O'Connell SC, prosecuting, told the jury the alleged victim was aged 13 to 14 when the incidents began, and they continued over a two-year span.
Because the boy was then aged under 15, the question of consent could not arise.
Mr O'Connell said that on one occasion an identity card fell from the accused's pocket, and the then teenager saw his name. He went to the Garda in 1998 and complained about the abuse, and in 1999 saw the accused again. He contacted gardaí who came and arrested him.
The alleged victim told Mr O'Connell that after he got off a bus at Ceannt Station on the first occasion he went to use the public toilet there. He said the accused followed him into a cubicle and locked the door. He was very frightened when the accused began to abuse him. This had happened to him before in a care centre.
The now 27-year-old man said he saw the accused in Galway city several times afterwards and the activity continued mainly in the Eyre Square public toilets. "No matter where I went he seemed to be present," he said.
Det Garda Hugh McClafferty said he arrested the accused on May 30th, 1999, after the alleged victim contacted gardaí and identified him coming out of a shop. The accused said he had never met the complainant before.
He said the allegations were "blatant lies" and claimed the first time he saw the complainant was some weeks earlier in a pub when he "called me all the names under the sun".
The accused claimed in a later interview that the alleged victim and some others threatened him in the city some weeks before his arrest.
Det Garda McClafferty agreed with defence counsel Mr Pádraig O'Higgins SC, that the accused had denied the allegations at all times.
The trial continues.