Man appears in court charged with sexual abuse of two young girls who are relatives

By Paul Higgins

A man appeared in court today (mon) charged with the sexual abuse of two young female relatives.

Appearing in the dock of Lisburn Magistrates Court in a grey tracksuit the 37-year-old foreign national, who cannot be identified to protect his alleged victims, was charged with two offences.

He faces two counts of inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, one alleged to have been committed on 5 March this year and the other known on a date unknown between 1 January 2016 and 5 March this year.

Giving evidence to the court during a disputed bail application, a Detective Constable said he believed he could connect the 37-year-old to each of the charges, adding that police were opposing bail amid fears the defendant would flee the jurisdiction.

He described how the 11-year-old complainant told her teachers and police that when she got home from school on Thursday, she allegedly saw the defendant, her uncle, having sex with her six-year-old cousin who is also his niece.

She also told police who first spoke to her and claimed during a video recorded Achieving Best Evidence interview with detectives that her uncle “done the same thing with me” the previous day.

The Detective told the court the girl further claimed he had touched her inappropriately in previous occasions, telling police her uncle had “made her promise not to tell anyone.”

He told District Judge Rosie Watters that officers investigating the allegations had seized a number of items from the defendant’s home, along with his clothes and had taken DNA swabs and samples for forensic investigation.

The girls themselves, the court heard, had also been medically examined and the officer revealed the doctor who conducted those examinations “has not seen trauma or injury to the genital area of either child.”

The 37-year-old was arrested and interviewed three times, denying the allegations during questioning.

Applying for bail, defence solicitor Conor Downey revealed that the 11-year-old alleged victim had been told by her aunt and uncle, with whom she had been living, that “come summer time she’s being sent back because of her bad behaviour.”

He further revealed that the six-year-old complainant has made no allegations against the defendant while the account given by the 11-year-old had “changed over the course” of her video police interviews.

Submitting that the defendant could live with his mother, Mr Downey said “there’s absolutely no medical findings whatsoever” that would corroborate the allegations which “by pure laws of physics simply cannot be done” in the way that’s been alleged.

Judge Watters freed the defendant on his own bail of £500 with a surety of £500, barred him from entering Lurgan town and from having unsupervised contact with children.

He will appear again at Craigavon Magistrates Court on 25 March.