A Bulgarian waiter has been acquitted of harassing a married Dublin woman he met when she was on holiday in Bulgaria with her husband in 1999.
The jury of seven men and five women took only 40 minutes to find Vencislav Venev (39), from a village on the Black Sea coast, not guilty of harassing Mary Gilhooley (48), of Cannonbrook Park, Lucan.
Members of the jury broke into loud laughter on day seven of the trial when Mr Venev told them of "rearranging the furniture" in Mrs Gilhooley's house when her husband was at work.
After this laughter defence lawyer Lisa Dempsey asked Judge Kevin Haugh, in the absence of the jury, to warn its members to take the trial more seriously.
Judge Haugh refused her application, saying he could not tell the jury not to laugh when clearly some aspects of the evidence given in court were funny. He said, in his opinion, the jury clearly realised the seriousness of the charges against Mr Venev.
In seven days of evidence the jury had heard two contrasting versions of the relationship between Mrs Gilhooley and Mr Venev. She told Ms Dempsey that he was an economically deprived eastern European family friend whom she took pity on and did everything in her power to help.
She helped secure a job and a work permit for him, let him stay in her house so he could save money on rent, listened to his problems "of which he had many" and generally looked after him like "an adopted child".
After all the help given continuously over five years, he started harassing her when she told him to stop contacting her because there was nothing more she could do to help him.
Mr Venev described Mrs Gilhooley as a possessive, jealous and controlling woman who dictated his every move in Ireland, accompanied him everywhere, prevented him from making any other contacts, handled all his finances and used him for sexual pleasure.
She described a man who had never been able to stand on his own two feet, continuously called her with a never-ending litany of problems, drank too much and insulted her and her family by calling them "f***ing Irish. F***ing Catholics."
He told the jury he was surprised by her continuous denial of the true nature of their relationship. He told the jury they had sex regularly when he lived in the same house with her and her husband and that the sexual intimacy continued just as regularly when he moved out 18 months later.
She would come and collect him from where he lived, and they would return to her home. Her husband would be at work and her son with a childminder. He would then "rearrange the furniture", assist in general domestic chores and have sex.
He was surprised, he said, when she denied this because he knew her husband was aware of their affair, and so was her close family. He claimed her husband had, in fact, been the reason he left her family home 18 months after he arrived in August 2000.
He said Mrs Gilhooley's husband had been jealous of their affair and had walked into his room around Christmas 2001 with a knife, shouting: "You have my wife."
