The Court of Appeal has dismissed MM’s appeal against conviction for sexual offences involving one of a pair of twins who grew up on a farm in County Carlow. The judgment dealt only with the conviction appeal; it did not determine MM’s separate appeal against sentence.
A jury at Carlow Circuit Criminal Court convicted MM in May 2014 of 25 counts of sexual assault, one count of attempted buggery of a person under 17, and one count of buggery of a person under 17. The jury acquitted MM on the charge relating to the second twin. The offences for which he was convicted related to A, who was aged between seven and 15 during the alleged offending.
The allegations concerned two periods, from 1991 to 1994 and from 1997 to 1999, with a gap of about three years. A said he could not recall exact dates but described assaults as occurring regularly, estimating once or twice a month. The judgment records that the indictment divided the charges into periods of eight to 12 months.
MM argued that the evidence did not allow the jury to place the alleged offences within the specific date ranges in the indictment. The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge properly left the counts to the jury and adequately directed them to consider whether each offence occurred within its charged period. It said A’s evidence about the duration and frequency of the assaults provided sufficient particulars for the jury to reach verdicts on the individual counts.
The appeal also challenged the trial judge’s warning about the delay before the complaints were made to gardaí in October 2011. The alleged offending had begun about 20 years earlier. The appeal court found that the judge’s additional address to the jury adequately warned that delay could affect memory and that the jury should take extra care in assessing the evidence.
MM further argued that the jury should have received a corroboration warning. The trial judge had decided against giving one, citing his view of the evidence and the law giving judges discretion on such warnings. The appeal court said that decision was reasonable and fair, and that a warning was not required and might have been inappropriate.
All grounds of appeal against conviction were dismissed. MM had received an effective eight-year prison term, with no part suspended, and a one-year post-release supervision order; the judgment records an order placing him on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely. Those sentence matters were background only to this decision on conviction.