A 23-year-old man who raped and sexually assaulted one teenage friend and sexually abused another acquaintance when they were all teenagers has appealed his conviction, arguing the decision not to hear the cases separately deprived him of a fair trial.
The youth was found guilty of one count of rape and one count of sexual assault against the first injured party by a Central Criminal Court jury. The defendant pleaded guilty in advance of his trial to one count of sexual assault against a second injured party.
The offending took place in various locations in the northeast between July 2017 and September 2018. The court heard he was 16 when he carried out the rape.
Sentencing the man in March 2024, Ms Justice Caroline Biggs imposed a term of three years and nine months in prison for the rape offence. She further sentenced him to 11 months for the sexual assault of the same injured party, with both sentences to run concurrently.
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She imposed a sentence of two years and three months for the sexual assault of the second injured party, to run consecutively with the previous sentence, giving a combined global sentence of six years.
At the Court of Appeal on Monday, Giollaíosa Ó Lideadha SC, representing the man, argued the trial judge had erred in refusing the defence application for a separate trial in respect of the complainants.
He submitted the allegation of rape was “significantly different” to the other charges on the indictment.
Mr Ó Lideadha said the evidence given by the first complainant in relation to the charge of rape was that the man “forced himself upon her” and “held her down physically” in circumstances where she was explicitly saying no.
He said that evidence was “fundamentally and wholly different” from the evidence related to the sexual assaults, where the complainants said they shared a bed with the appellant and he engaged in sexual acts while they slept or pretended to sleep.
He said the fact that they were the same age and part of the same peer group was not enough, and the similarities were not such as to justify a decision to say that it was a “pattern”.
Mr Ó Lideadha also argued that the failure to procure the complainants’ phones at the time the allegations were made led to missing evidence, which deprived his client of a helpful line of defence. He said missing metadata from videos and photos was relevant because it could have pointed to a timeline where the first injured party’s attitudes changed towards the appellant.
“If we had the original phone we could have got an expert witness to go into the box and say that photo or video was taken on such and such a day at such and such a time,” said counsel, going on to say instead, the defence had been deprived of this possibility because the phones had not been seized at the time.
He said the missing data had real effects in terms of the issue of collusion and the evidence of the first complainant that the relationship “soured” after the allegation of rape.
In response, Seamus Clarke SC, for the State, said the defence had an expert on standby who carried out an extraction of the relevant evidence from the complainant’s phones.
“I think the judge had a high degree of confidence that the material on the new phone - the old material transferred over to the new phone - that a significant amount of data was available,” he said, adding that number of photos and videos were retrieved.
He said the defence was able to make its point sufficiently for there to be a fair trial.
Concerning the failure to hold separate trials, Mr Clarke said the fact it was a different offence was “by the side” in circumstances where the parties were all part of the same peer group, had attended parties together where they were all intoxicated and the appellant was “taking advantage” of “their friendship and loyalty”.
Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy said the court would reserve judgment.
