He said the defendant had since fully acknowledged the extent of his offending and had started to become aware of the enormity of the impact of his offending on his cousin. He said the victim’s family and the court were “utterly dismayed” that in his Garda interviews the defendant did not acknowledge the truth of his abuse. In his sentencing comments, Mr Justice White said the aggravating circumstances included the seriousness of the offending, the use of pornography to groom the victim, the breach of trust and the effect on the victim. Lawyers for the accused told the Central Criminal Court that a Probation Services assessment identified that the boy’s pathway to offending was the viewing of adult pornography on his mobile phone at an early age.īrendan Grehan SC, defending, said there was “an epidemic in its own right of young boys accessing pornography and then acting it out in inappropriate ways”.
He also pleaded guilty to causing a child to watch sexual activity. He was aged 13 and 14 when he carried out the attacks at his home in Co Dublin and at her family home in another county. The now 16-year-old defendant pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to sexually assaulting and raping his cousin on dates between December 2017 and May 2019. “I hope that she can heal and I wish her the very best,” Mr Justice White said on Tuesday morning. She has to try to recover from this ordeal when her bodily integrity and innocence was needlessly taken away from her for such selfish reasons by someone she loved and trusted. “She is the person who has really suffered and that should never be forgotten. Mr Justice Michael White said the victim, who was aged between eight and nine when her teenage cousin raped her, was an exceptional young child. A judge has said he was struck by the humanity of a young girl who told gardaí that she was really angry at her teenage cousin who raped her but she still loved him.