A man who was accused of sexually assaulting a young woman while she slept beside her boyfriend has been found not guilty.
Letterkenny Court.
The man put his head in his hands as the verdict was read out at Letterkenny Circuit Court this evening.
The jury took more than two hours to reach their majority verdict.
The young woman claimed she awoke to find her boyfriend’s friend in her bed touching her intimately.
She alleged she found the man touching her breasts and bum and raising her leg after he slipped into her bed while she and her partner slept.
The woman, who cannot be named, appeared by video-link from Australia where she now lives.
The alleged assault took place at a house in Letterkenny on May 17th, 2010.
The accused, a man in his 30s, pleaded not guilty to the sexual assault.
The court heard that the woman, her partner and the accused had all met at the Golden Grill Nightclub in Letterkenny.
They all got a taxi home.
The woman revealed how the man was given the spare room in their house and she went to bed with her partner and they had sex.
However she awoke some time later claiming to have found the man in their bed touching her breasts and bum and trying to lift her leg.
“He told me to shush and everything would be okay. I told him to get out but he wouldn’t get out of the bed,” said the woman.
The woman then screamed at the man and told him to get out of the room as she woke her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend also shouted at the man and he left the room to go back to the spare room.
The woman then said she went into another spare room and barricaded herself into the room with a chest of drawers and cried herself to sleep.
The next morning the woman told her partner to ask the man to leave the house.
He did so and after some time the accused and the woman’s partner left the house to go to the pub.
Defence barrister Peter Nolan put it to the woman that because she had had so much to drink on the night that most of her memory was a daze.
He put it to her that the incident did not happen at all and did she not find it unusual that her partner left with the accused to go to the pub.
The woman said she was angry with her partner for doing this and she had actually broken up with him for a while because of this.
She declared “I know exactly what happened when XXXXX came into my bed.
“I would never bring this case four years later and then allegedly make something up.
“We are a family but I will never forgive (her partner) for walking out the door with XXXX,” she said.
The woman’s partner also gave video-link evidence from Australia.
He revealed how he had been playing two football matches on the day before the alleged incident took place.
He said he awoke to find his partner kicking him and claiming she had been assaulted by the man.
The woman’s partner said he roared at the other man to get out, gave the woman a hug and then went back to sleep.
He said the next morning his partner told him to get the accused out of the house.
The woman’s partner and the accused left and went to go to the pub.
He said the reason why he went out with the accused was to get him out of the house and also to get his brother some money.
The woman’s partner said he was not in the company of the accused in the pub but was with lots of other football players.
He said he drank up to seven pints and continued to get texts from his partner and then went home.
Barrister Peter Nolan said there was more holes in the woman’s story than in a sieve.
He said the problem with her claims was that she simply didn’t know exactly what happened because of the amount of drink taken.
“She now believes that something happened in the bed. I’m not saying she was not right to believe it but there was no evidence to believe it.
“We have drink running through this like a river – drink is the causation of al the social problems in rural Ireland today.
“The amount of drink taken in this case would make a lot of publicans happy in Co Donegal today.
“All they can say is “if it happened it happened.”
He added that the woman was in a quandary as to what actually happened in the bed but said “that is not enough’ “There is no evidence of what actually happened, This has converted that belief into a fact. Stories are invented and slowly but surely belief turns to fact.”
He added that the woman’s partner’s evidence was “tainted and corrupted” because of his loyalty to his partner.
“He said he was a home bird and didn’t even want to be in Australia but for his partner and their child. I don’t blame him but that leaves his evidence tainted and corrupted,” added Mr Nolan.