A teenager who sexually assaulted the young daughter of his foster family has been jailed for four years by Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. The 18-year-old man, who was 15 when the offences came to light, pleaded guilty to three counts of sexually assaulting the then four to six-year-old girl between 1999 and 2001 at his foster home in north Dublin.
"That young man got five years of love and acceptance in my house, but he threw it back in my face," his foster mother told the media after the initial sentence hearing. "He will never be able to touch a child of mine again."
Garda Olive Jolley told Ms Mary Rose Gearty, prosecuting, that the girl's parents had taken the boy into their home in Blanchardstown when he was 10 years of age. Both his parents were alcoholics and the foster family had treated him as one of their own.
His offences first came to light in early 2001, when one of the victim's sisters found him in the conservatory lying on the ground with her young sister.
Ms Gearty said that the older sister reported the incident to her parents, who had a lengthy discussion with the defendant about the particular incident and about his sexual behaviour in general. A social worker was present throughout the discussion.
The foster mother told the media that she went through a lot of soul-searching before allowing him to stay with the family again. She first talked to him in the presence of a social worker and explained to him that what he had done was very wrong. She had initially sent him to a hostel. But, having reared him as a son, she felt concerned about his welfare and rang the hostel to inquire about him. She learned that he had left the hostel and was wandering the streets again.
After that she took him back. She imposed strict conditions on him, including that he was never to be alone in the same room with the girl. If the girl came into a room while he was there, he was to leave it immediately.
The victim's mother also made arrangements to ensure that someone always watched over him, so that he was never alone with the girl, and to ensure that he adhered to the rules she had imposed.
Despite her best efforts and the trust she had extended to him, a second such incident occurred in June 2001. The court heard that the girl's mother discovered him lying on top of her daughter in her bed. The mother had been feeding a younger baby and had only taken her eyes off the boy for a few minutes when she became aware that he was no longer in the room with her.
She ran upstairs to her daughter's room, where she found him lying on top of her daughter. "I loved him till then," the woman who had trusted and cared for him for many years told the media.
She told Judge Desmond Hogan that she wanted his name published, but he ruled against that to protect the young girl's identity.
Ms Mary Ellen Ring SC, defending, said the defendant was a young man to whom life had not been kind. Born to alcoholic parents, he was "wandering around the city starving" when the girl's parents took him into their care. "That he was wandering, at the age of 10, starving and uncared for, in Celtic Ireland," Ms Ring said, bore witness to his sad circumstances.