Woman acquitted of sexual abuse of cousin 

By Isabel Hayes 

A young woman has been acquitted by a jury of sexually abusing her younger cousin during sleepovers when they were children. 

The two-week Central Criminal Court trial involved allegations of serious sexual abuse against one girl by another during family sleepovers.

It left a ruptured family in its wake, with extended family members giving evidence in support of the accused young woman. 

Last Friday, the jury returned not guilty verdicts against the now 20-year-old Dublin woman on all 12 counts against her after over nine hours of deliberating.

The defendant and her mother both cried as the verdicts were handed down. 

She had pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of sexual assault and one count of section 4 rape of her younger cousin in various addresses in Dublin on dates between July 2017 and July 2019.

In relation to the section 4 rape allegation, she had denied penetrating the girl with a hairbrush. 

The accused was aged between 12 and 14 at the time of the alleged offending, while her younger cousin was aged between 10 and 11. 

The complainant in the case, a now 17-year-old girl, alleged the abuse occurred when the girls were staying over in their mutual grandmother’s house and in each other’s homes.

She alleged the abuse was preceded by pornography, which the older girl showed her on their tablets. 

The complainant and her parents testified that the sleepovers occurred on several occasions, but the accused woman and her mother denied these sleepovers ever took place.

Several of the complainant’s father’s family – including the girls’ grandmother and other family members – also gave evidence for the defence that the girls did not stay over together. 

Their mutual aunts and uncles spoke of the girls not interacting or getting on particularly well at family gatherings.

They described the accused woman as “gentle”, “loving”, “sweet” and “childlike”.

As the eldest grandchild, she babysat her younger cousins who looked up to her, family members testified. 

The complainant was “more mature and grown up”, one aunt said.

She sat with the adults at family gatherings rather than playing with the other children, the court heard. 

The court heard evidence that there were family tensions with the complainant’s mother, with one uncle saying she would “make swipes” against the accused woman when she was a child.

The matriarch of the family said this daughter-in-law told her when the complainant was a baby: “She’s my daughter, not yours.” 

Prosecution counsel told the jury that the alleged abuse occurred shortly after the complainant made her communion, when the girls had sleepovers in their grandmother’s home. 

The prosecution alleged the accused would watch pornography on her tablet before asking her younger cousin to carry out sexual acts.

There were no charges pertaining to these allegations as the accused had not yet reached the age of criminal responsibility. 

The allegations pertaining to the period on the indictment were said to have occurred during sleepovers in each of the girls’ homes and on one occasion when they stayed the night in their aunt’s home. 

In her specialist interview with gardaí shortly after she made the allegations in 2023, the complainant told gardaí that while having sleepovers with her cousin, they played a game that was initially called ‘mammies and babies’ but which became known as the ‘Justin Bieber game’. 

The girl said her cousin told her she should pretend that she (the accused) was Justin Bieber as the younger girl liked the pop star at the time.

The girl said the accused made her carry out sexual acts and carried out sexual acts on her when they were in bed together, often after watching pornographic videos. 

The accused woman took the stand and denied the allegations.

“None of it is true,” she told defence counsel, Dominic McGinn SC.

She told the court her cousin never stayed the night in her house and she did not sleep over in hers.

She said she was never even in the younger girl’s bedroom. 

“We weren’t friends,” she told defence counsel. “There was no reason we weren’t friends; we just weren’t.” 

 She said she did not own a tablet during the relevant period after she stepped on hers and broke it when she was younger.

Her mother also testified that her daughter did not own a tablet during this time. 

The accused woman’s mother brought the jury through a review she compiled of the two-year period on the indictment, showing where her daughter was every weekend.

The court heard she was heavily involved in her chosen sport and spent almost every weekend at the sports club. 

The court heard the accused woman’s mother was estranged from her brother – the complainant’s father – for a period of time when the girls were younger. 

She told the court her niece never stayed over in her house, that her daughter never stayed over in her niece’s house and that while her daughter occasionally stayed with the family grandmother, her niece never did. 

The grandmother also took the stand for the defence and told the jury that the complainant had never stayed in her home, apart from one occasion when her younger sibling was born.

She outlined tensions with the girl’s mother – her daughter-in-law – as the reason for this. 

This family matriarch, an impressive witness who was categorical in her evidence, told the court she was not lying about sleepovers to protect her eldest grand-daughter.

“I do not lie and I am telling the truth.” 

The girls’ uncle gave evidence that the complainant’s mother made “swipes” at the accused woman as a child.

He said he put it down to “jealousy” and rejected a prosecution assertion that it was “nonsense” that a grown woman would be jealous of a child. 

Family members also asserted that the complainant was unhappy about not being invited to the accused woman’s 18th birthday, which was held in an over 18s venue.

This was rejected by the complainant when she was cross-examined. 

Their mutual aunt told the jury that the girls did sleep over together in her home along with another child on one occasion, but she confirmed the accused woman’s evidence that she stayed in the bedroom until they were asleep due to a problem with the lighting. 

The complainant’s mother and father both gave evidence, along with the complainant, that the sleepovers did occur and that they were often arranged at the last minute during family gatherings.

The court heard that the girl’s mother found pornographic videos on her daughter’s tablet and the child later said she had been told to watch them by the accused. 

In cross-examination, she told defence counsel she watched the videos “once or twice”. 

She rejected a defence suggestion that once she told her mother the allegation, she couldn’t take it back. “What would I get out of making this up?” 

Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo thanked jurors for their service and excused them from serving on a jury for 10 years.

He told the accused woman she was free to go and he asked the prosecution to convey the outcome of the case to the complainant, who was not in court for the verdicts.