Society has a duty to protect children from the sexual advances of adults who should know better, a prosecution lawyer argued in court yesterday in a case in which a girl has accused six men of a series of sexual assaults on her when she was 12 and 13 years of age.
The girl, who is now 17, would say she distinctly remembered the night one of the the man drove her in his car to a wooded area because on the way he played a tape of himself singing Westlife songs, prosecutor Patricia McLaughlin said.
She told a special sitting of Donegal Circuit Court it was the fifth occasion of eight on which the man had intercourse with the girl. Another time he took her to his home where they had sex in the bedroom while his own girlfriend was in hospital, having had their second child.
The then 13-year-old, now 17, was "particularly ashamed and embarrassed" about that incident with the man, who was 24 at the time, Ms McLaughlin said.
She told a jury of nine men and three women of a series of sex attacks on the girl in 2002 and 2003.
She said that although the prosecution did not maintain the girl was forced into sex acts, the men involved had still broken the law because sex with a child under 15, even with her consent, was still an offence.
"Society has a duty to protect all children from the sexual advances of adults who should know better," Ms McLaughlin added.
She told the jury that all offences, with one exception, in the case were committed when the girl came out of care.
The exception, before she was put into care, involved kissing and fondling at the back of a sports hall on a Confirmation night and was the only time there was not intercourse.
The girl was returned to care when the other alleged offences came to light.
Ms McLaughlin said it was admitted that before the girl went into care she was behaving very badly, drinking, smoking, hanging around with older people and being sexually active.
Ms McLaughlin said a soldier accused of six sex assaults was 28 at the time and knew the girl was only 13 because he asked her age after the first occasion.
The men, whose ages range from 22 to 32, are accused of sexually assaulting the youngster at a number of south Co Donegal locations in Ballyshannon, Bundoran and Rossnowlagh.
Some of the offences were said in court to have occurred in a national school.
One man, a 24-year-old lorry-driver, is accused of sexually assaulting the girl twice between May 1st and August 31st, 2002, when she was 12 years old.
A 27-year-old lorry driver is accused of eight sex assaults.
A 32-year-old soldier faces six sex assault charges.
Registrar Geraldine O'Connor took 19 minutes to read out the charges.
Judge Martin Nolan, who said the trial could last two weeks, was told by one defence lawyer that she might need to seek a delay in the hearing because additional evidence, 16 hours of video-tapes, was handed over late by the prosecution.
The judge ruled that nothing could be reported during the trial that might lead to identification of the girl.