The Court of Appeal has upheld the convictions of an anonymised father, P.P., for rape and other sexual offences against his daughter.
P.P. was convicted after a five-day trial of one count of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of exploitation. The offences were found to have occurred in his apartment between October 2009 and October 2010 during access visits with his daughter.
The complainant was nine when specialist Garda interviewers recorded her account in March 2011. That recording was later played to the jury as her evidence-in-chief under section 16 of the Criminal Evidence Act 1992.
A central appeal point concerned section 27 of that Act, which allows unsworn evidence from a child under 14 if the court is satisfied the child can give an intelligible account of relevant events. No formal inquiry into that issue took place before the recording was shown.
The Court of Appeal allowed P.P. to raise that point despite it not having been argued at trial. However, it rejected the challenge on its merits. The court said a formal inquiry would have been preferable, but the complainant’s subsequent cross-examination demonstrated that she could answer questions coherently and give an intelligible account. No unfairness resulted.
The court also rejected an argument that the recorded interview should not have gone into the jury room. It noted that her cross-examination was short and focused and found no resulting injustice.
A further challenge concerned evidence that P.P. had accessed adult pornography. The court held this was relevant to the exploitation count, which alleged that he had invited, induced or coerced the complainant to view pornographic images.
The court also found that a specialist Garda’s initial reference to the complainant as a "victim" had been adequately corrected and that the trial judge properly directed the jury on P.P.’s Garda interviews.
All conviction grounds were dismissed.