By Eimear Dodd
An Irish celebrity has told the jury in his trial for the defilement of a child under the age of 17 over a decade ago that he took the complainant’s number at a festival as “she was nice”.
The man (40), who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of engaging in sexual acts with a child under the age of 17 at locations in Dublin on dates between August and December 2010.
Under cross-examination last Friday (13th) from Eilis Brennan SC, prosecuting, the man said he did not pass his phone to a security guard at the Oxegen festival for the complainant to put her number into, but agreed he did give his phone to the woman.
He said she had beckoned to him, they chatted, then “I gave her my number, and I took hers”.
When asked his motive for getting her number, the man replied: “I guess it was at a festival.
“She waved and made eye contact.
“We had a little chat. It was a prominently over-18s festival. She was nice, and I took her number”.
Ms Brennan asked, “Is it fair to say you fancied her?” The man shrugged and said, “Reasonable”.
He also denied they kissed at the festival.
He said the complainant “touched base” with him a few weeks later but couldn’t recall when.
He insisted she told him by text that she was 18, but “can’t recall the texts exactly” or when specifically this subject was discussed.
He denied that the complainant told him she was 16 soon after they met at Oxegen.
He repeated his evidence that she told him she was 18.
He said they texted “very infrequently” and that the nature of their contact between July 2010 and January 2011 was “minimal”.
The man told Ms Brennan that he met the complainant a few weeks after the Oxegen festival for lunch but could not recall who organised their meeting.
He said she told him she was 18 and doing her Leaving Certificate during this encounter.
When asked by Ms Brennan, “Was it a date? How did you perceive the nature of the relationship?”.
He replied, “Hadn’t categorised it”.
He said the complainant suggested they met for lunch in late January 2011, during which he says he discovered she was 17.
Ms Brennan asked, “Did you see it as a date?” and he replied, “I hadn’t categorized it.”
She then asked the man why he was shocked and surprised when the complainant told him she was 17 if there had been minimal interaction between them.
“She lied about her age.
“There is a difference between saying you are 18 and revealing that is not the case.”
When asked by Ms Brennan if he was cross, the man said he was “shocked”.
Prosecuting counsel then noted the man said he took the woman to his workplace once following the lunch in January 2011, but “on your account, you’ve found out she’s lied about her age, but you still bring her”.
Ms Brennan put it to the man that the complainant could only have described his workplace and the stairwell in detail as she “was in the fire escape”.
The man said he never went into the stairway while working at that office.
Ms Brennan put the woman’s evidence that she and the man would discuss the first alleged incident in the stairwell afterwards.
He denied that the conversation had taken place.
He pointed out he had provided eight phones and their pin numbers to gardai, which included messages from a later time period when he had a “physical relationship” with the complainant, and there were no messages of an “overtly sexual nature”.
Ms Brennan replied there is “ nothing wrong” that you did engage in a sexual relationship later” after the time period in which the alleged offences occurred.
“Every single phone that I gave to gardai with my password”, he said, adding there was never ever kind of sexual explicit talk between us”.
Ms Brennan told the man that the woman’s evidence was this occurred during a phone conversation, and she was “asserting sexual text messages even when engaged in a sexual relationship”.
The man stated, “The conversation didn’t happen”.
Earlier, in direct evidence, the man said he met with friends on December 26, 2011, while home for Christmas.
He said he booked a room in a Dublin hotel as he may get “intoxicated and sloppy” and “instead of traipsing in and waking up my parents”.
He said there was no one in the room with him.
The jury also heard evidence of separate text exchanges between the man and the complainant and between the man and several of his friends on December 26, 2011.
The man agreed with his counsel that he booked a hotel room in June 2012, adding that he and the complainant had stayed over that night.
He said it was “possible” that they went for drinks, but “that was the only time we were in a hotel room.
He agreed that he met the complainant at a music festival in Spain in July 2012.
He also told defence counsel that he had been in the complainant’s home after this date.
The man also said he met the woman at a music festival in Cork in 2019 and accepted that they remained in contact by social media until December 2020.
The jury heard technical evidence that the complainant’s telephone number was saved on the man’s phone on July 11, 2010, the date of Oxegen festival.
Analysis identified the complainant’s phone number on four of the phones seized at the man’s house and that it was listed under the name of ‘John’ on two of these phones.
The court heard that a factory reset was carried out on an iPhone 3 in March 2013, but this can be done for a variety of reasons and is not sinister.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court has previously heard that the complainant initially told the man she was 18 when they first met.
In her evidence, she said she told him she was 16 in before they engaged in sexual activity.
It is the State’s case that the man put his penis in the complainant’s mouth on three occasions, once in his workplace and twice in his home.
The complainant was 16 at the time, while the man was then 27. He has denied any wrongdoing.
The trial continues.