By Niamh Ellis
A Supreme Court judgment has rejected an appeal against a conviction for the sexual assault of a 12-year-old child after finding that a counselling note discovered after trial had no realistic potential to change the jury's verdict.
A.M. was convicted at Kerry Circuit Criminal Court, sitting in Limerick, in December 2021 of sexually assaulting C, his wife's grandniece, during a 2014 visit to Ireland. He was 60 and C was 12. The prosecution case concerned one incident in C's bedroom while she was ill and off school.
After conviction, a Victim Impact Statement revealed that C had attended counselling. Records then obtained from Kerry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre included a September 2019 note recording that "the sexual abuse happened on more than one occasion". C later told Gardaí she had not said that and maintained there had always been one assault.
The Court of Appeal dismissed A.M.'s appeal. It had first directed Gardaí to obtain C's account of the counselling note.
Mr Justice Maurice Collins held that the Court of Appeal was entitled to take that step. He also found that A.M. had no legal entitlement to receive the counselling record without C's knowledge or to confront her with it for the first time at a retrial.
The judgment found the record had limited evidential value. The counsellor had no identified independent recollection that C made the disputed statement, while C had otherwise consistently described one incident. The jury had also heard evidence of Skype messages sent by A.M. to C after the alleged assault.
Collins J concluded there was no reasonable possibility that the note could have materially affected the verdict. He would dismiss the appeal and affirm the Court of Appeal decision.
Separately, the judgment criticised how counselling-record consent had operated. It said victims should know which records are proposed for disclosure and see their contents before waiving statutory privacy protections, with consent coming at the end rather than the start of that process.