Man jailed for sexual assault of girl (14) at party

A 14-YEAR-OLD girl who was sexually assaulted at a party in Carlow last year told the court that the dress she wore that night was “soaked in tears”. Last week at Carlow Circuit Court a man was sentenced to one year and six months in prison for sexually assaulting the girl in a housing estate in Carlow town on 22 June of last year.

The defendant, a Pakistani native who cannot be named to protect the victim’s identity, was 25 at the time of the incident. He had pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual assault contrary to section 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) Act, 1990 and false imprisonment under section 15 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1997.

A jury found the defendant guilty on both counts last Wednesday, 26 November, after three-and-a-half hours of deliberation.

The victim was still a young person at the time of the trial and gave evidence via a recorded interview with a trained garda in Waterford Garda Station on 29 June 2024. The victim was cross-examined on that evidence via video-link during the trial.

The teenaged victim explained how she was planning to stay at her 15-year-old friend’s house on the Saturday night when the offence took place. Her friend had been to a party on Friday night in the same house and was invited back by a boy in their year the following night. The pair were joined by three other friends, two boys and one girl, around the same age who got dressed up and were drinking energy drinks on the five-minute walk to the estate.

They were observed by a neighbour in the Carlow town estate as being “giddy” before entering the house, but all witnesses denied drinking alcohol before going to the party or bringing alcohol to the house.

Upon entering the house at around 9.15pm, they were met by three men, whom the witnesses described as being in their thirties or forties. They were different people to those who had been at the party the previous night, and all but one was previously unknown to the group of friends.

The victim said the men brought in two bottles of vodka and the group sat in the living room across three black leather sofas.

“He wanted me to sit beside him, and I said ‘no, I’ll sit beside my friends’,” the victim stated in her evidence to the court.

The defendant poured vodka into the victim’s cup with her energy drink, despite her protests. “He was trying to get me drunk,” she said.

She shared two drinks poured by him with one of her female friends. The other three friends said they did not drink that night.

The defendant then began acting “flirtatiously”, getting her to wear his basketball cap and taking selfies with her, which were shown as evidence to the court. The victim described him as acting “too nice”.

Snapchat videos and photos from the night show the children and the men in the sitting room of the house with glasses and two bottles of vodka on the table. In one video, one of the male witnesses, a friend of the victim, said he felt “very uncomfortable” in the situation, which was not the party they had been expecting.

After 40 minutes or so, a group of the children tried to leave the house. One of the men, not the defendant, took the front door keys and dangled them in their faces, saying they couldn’t go.

Feeling unsafe, one of the children decided to open the right-hand window of the sitting room that led outwards onto the driveway. The four friends of the victim fled the house through this window and went to the green in the centre of the housing estate.

The victim was left behind in the room with the defendant and described feeling “tipsy” at that point. She said: “He wouldn’t leave me alone till I gave him my Snapchat.” 

She remembers that it was at this point that he closed the sitting room door and tried to kiss her and pull up her dress. He succeeded in kissing her cheek and neck, all the while she was saying “no, no, no”.

“I felt really uncomfortable and scared,” she stated in her evidence to the court.

After several minutes, her friends realised that the victim was still in the house and one of the boys went back to get her out. He kicked open the door as one of the men was trying to close it and observed the victim grabbing onto a door frame, with the defendant holding her arm and pulling her back into the room. She dipped under the other man’s arm and ran out onto the green to meet her friends.

An adult witness at this point said that the victim was crying hysterically with her friends and that she went up to her to ask if she was okay. The victim described herself as having “multiple panic attacks”.

Her friend said in her evidence to the court that the victim “seemed very distraught, panicked and traumatised”.

The two boys ran back to scream at the men in the house. The group then went to the bathroom of a nearby restaurant, where the victim, still crying, tried to call her older sister for help. She left her sister a voice message, played for the court, in which her distress is evident.

The victim went back to her family home, and her sister called the gardaí.

David Bulbulia SC, for the defendant, noted: “What you’ve described is bad stuff that a man shouldn’t do to a girl.” 

In his cross-examination of the victim, he put it to her that the defendant, a married man, had said that he never touched her in the way she described, or prevented her from leaving the house. He further denied pouring alcohol into the victim’s glass and claimed he did not drink alcohol due to his religion.

Mr Bulbulia put it to her that the defendant had said he had asked the group to leave as they were making too much noise, then grabbed the keys from his friend and let the victim out.

The victim responded resolutely: “That’s not true.” 

In a statement to the gardaí under caution on 22 February 2025, the defendant said he had woken up at around 7pm after work and noticed a party going on. He claimed the kids were drunk and could “say anything”.

In his closing arguments, prosecuting barrister Stephen Montgomery BL, noted the victim’s “unshakeable evidence” and the “heartbreaking and compelling” story she presented to the court. He pointed out the inconsistencies in the defence and described the defendant as “caught in a lie”.

He noted that sexual assault cases are “by and large he said, she said” but put it to the jury that the victim was “an honest child”.

In the defence’s closing arguments, Mr Bulbulia said “of course, it could have happened this way” but that “trials don’t operate like pantomimes”. He asked the jury to set aside any prejudice towards foreign men in Ireland and asked them to consider the fact that the defendant had voluntarily come to the garda station to be interviewed, had not fled and had offered forensic evidence.

“He was willing to do anything to prove his innocence,” said Mr Bulbulia.

In his charge to the jury, Judge Eugene O’Kelly said that as the victim was a child, she could not consent to any touching of an indecent nature, and that for the false imprisonment charge there was no minimum amount of time for the offence to occur. “You must be sure that you are making the right decision,” he told the jury.

The jury came back the following morning with a guilty verdict on both counts. The now 26-year-old defendant was sentenced by Judge O’Kelly on Thursday 27 November. 

His lawyer noted that he had no previous convictions anywhere in the world, had finished school in Pakistan at the age of 16, was working in Ireland legally and that he had been co-operative throughout the process. He was supporting his wife and family back in Pakistan with his earnings in Ireland and the prison term was likely to have adverse consequences for his family.

Judge O’Kelly regretted the defendant’s refusal to accept the guilty verdict, and his lack of remorse or regret. However, he noted “this court unfortunately has to deal with much graver instances of sexual abuse”, and that the false imprisonment was “relatively minor” and “fleeting”.

He set the headline sentence at four years. Because of the defendant’s very poor English and the effect that this would have on his prison experience, he reduced the sentence to three years and six months, with the final two years suspended. The suspension is on the condition that the defendant must leave the jurisdiction for a period of ten years within seven days of his release from prison.

Regarding the impact this would have on the defendant’s family, Judge O’Kelly said: “They are also victims because of his own actions.” 

In a victim impact statement read to the court, the victim said she had trouble falling asleep since the incident and experienced anxiety. She said: “I was put in a situation I was way too young for. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone.” 

She described the dress she wore that night as “soaked in tears”.

She thanked the court and the jury and said: “My voice was heard because of you all.”