The Court of Appeal has upheld six convictions for indecent assault against PK arising from offences which a complainant said occurred when she was aged about seven in 1988.
PK was convicted by majority jury verdicts in the Circuit Criminal Court in October 2025. In March 2026, he received concurrent 18-month prison terms on each count, with the final six months suspended for six months.
The complainant first reported the alleged abuse to gardaí in May 2018. She said PK, then aged about 14 or 15 and staying in her family home to help her stepfather on a farm, assaulted her on six occasions while babysitting her and her siblings. PK denied the allegations.
On appeal, his lawyers challenged the admission of evidence from two people whom the complainant had later told about the alleged abuse. The Court of Appeal held that the trial judge was entitled to treat those disclosures as admissible recent complaint evidence in the circumstances. It also found that the jury had been properly told that such evidence could only show consistency and did not strengthen or prove the allegations themselves.
PK also argued that missing evidence made his trial unfair. His complaints concerned the deaths of the complainant’s mother and a friend, the non-attendance of her stepfather and the absence of a record from a Garda with whom she initially had contact.
The appeal court rejected those arguments. It found that suggested lines of defence based on what the missing witnesses might have said were largely speculative. The complainant’s stepfather’s relevant statement about her having said she was five when the abuse occurred was ultimately put before the jury.
The court also rejected arguments about uncertainty over whether the offences occurred specifically in 1988. It found there was evidence capable of supporting that timeframe and that the jury had expressly asked about the dates and was correctly told it must be satisfied that the offences occurred in 1988.
All grounds of appeal were dismissed.