An unemployed dance teacher has been sentenced to six months in jail for falsely accusing X Factor judge Louis Walsh of groping him in a nightclub.
Leonard Watters pleaded guilty to making two false reports to gardaí that the pop music mogul sexually assaulted him in Dublin club Krystle last April.
The 24-year-old father-of-two from Navan, Co Meath, who was described in court as a Walter Mitty-type character, has apologised publicly to Walsh.
Pleading for a non-custodial sentence, Watters' solicitor, Cahir O'Higgins, said his client was a tragic figure whose life had been a litany of disasters from an early age.
Watters was now a laughing stock and a joke, and had been treated as a pariah in his own community, he told the court. "For ever and a day, he will be known as the guy who accused Louis Walsh in the wrong," he said.
Passing sentence, Judge Dermot Dempsey immediately granted Watters bail to appeal against the decision, on condition that he lodged €100 in cash with the court.
PA