A young Dublin man who sexually assaulted and defiled his teenage cousin over a two year period will be sentenced early next year.
The man (21) pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 13 sample counts, including sexual assault, defilement and defilement of a child under 15 years old between 2008 and 2010.
The sex abuse began at the man’s home when his victim was aged 11 or 12 years and the accused was aged 15.
Fiona Murphy BL, prosecuting, told the court that the victim did not want to be identified but that he has no difficulty with the accused man being named.
Judge Mary Ellen Ring said she would leave over these issues of anonymity to January when she said she will finalise sentencing on this charges and other charges.
Padraig Dwyer SC, defending, said that there would be some issues in relation to publication of his name.
The court heard that the victim has suffered from depression and anxiety as a result of the abuse and that it has had a huge negative effect on his family.
The accused told gardai that they he didn’t know the extent to which his actions were wrong and characterised the behaviour as consensual. The abuse stopped when the victim was aged 14 and became old enough to stand up for himself.
Garda Damien McCormack told Ms Murphy that on the first occasion of abuse the man made his young cousin masturbate him in his bedroom, while both their mothers were in the kitchen downstairs.
He had sex with his cousin on dates in 2009 and 2010 and once showed the then 13-year-old online images of children as young as nine being abused by adult men from a Russian website.
On another occasion the victim ended up with a bloody nose after a fight with his older cousin while refusing him sex. The victim locked himself in the bathroom but didn’t tell his mother why he had fought with the man.
On Christmas Day 2010 the man brought his victim to a gap between a shed and a wall at another house and told him to perform oral sex on him. The victim later told gardai that he complied because he still felt afraid of his older cousin.
The court heard that while the accused accepted the allegations he characterised the events in a different way.
He said he and the victim were young and messing around and that it was consensual, saying: “If it did happen it didn’t happen like that. We would both do stuff to each other”.
He said he knew what he was doing was wrong but not to the extent it actually is. He told gardai: “I feel bad for how it affected him (the victim) but as this was going on I was not aware of how this was affecting him”.
