The Court of Appeal has upheld the convictions of a man found guilty of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl during a journey and overnight stay in 1991.
The appellant, identified as BH, was convicted by a unanimous jury on 15 March 2024 of two counts of sexual assault. He was later sentenced to concurrent terms of two years' imprisonment.
The complainant, C, told the trial that BH assaulted her while driving her from the Midlands towards a ferry terminal and again the following morning at his home. She was travelling alone ahead of her family's summer holiday on an offshore island.
A central issue on appeal concerned evidence which might have been given by BH's wife, who died before the trial. BH maintained that his wife would have said C did not stay overnight at their house and instead took an evening ferry.
The Court of Appeal accepted that investigating gardaí should have attempted to take a statement from BH's wife after his 2016 interview. However, it held that the failure did not make the trial unfair.
The jury had already heard BH's account of what he said his wife told him. Another defence witness also gave evidence supporting the suggestion that she had brought C to an evening ferry.
The court placed particular weight on the fact that C was never challenged in cross-examination on her evidence that she had stayed overnight at BH's house. It held that this was an insuperable difficulty for an argument that the missing evidence deprived BH of a fair trial.
The court also rejected complaints concerning the jury's requests for witness statements and recordings, the failure to call a GP, the trial judge's handling of a jury question, the majority-verdict direction and an assertion that the verdict was against the evidence.
Ms Justice Tara Burns delivered the judgment on 5 May 2026, with Ms Justice Kennedy and Ms Justice Owens agreeing. The appeal against conviction was dismissed.