Care worker pleads not guilty to 23 sexual assault charges

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The unnamed care worker pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 23 counts of sexually assaulting four girls. The proceedings were reported on 27 February 2020.

The charges concern alleged assaults at a Leinster créche on dates between February 2015 and December 2016. The four complainants were aged between five and eight when the allegations emerged in December 2016.

Garda Louise Curtin told the trial that, after initially establishing that one child understood the difference between truth and lies, she did not ask questions designed to test the truth of her account. She accepted that some interview recommendations were not followed and that best practice was not followed in the phrasing of some questions.

The report said a third child, interviewed in late January 2017, said the other two complainants had told her that things they had said about the accused doing sexual things were untrue. Garda Curtin said she had not been asked to conduct a follow-up interview with the child she interviewed. Asked whether the children should have been questioned about the third child’s account, she said this would have to be balanced against their welfare.

The trial was continuing.