The Court of Appeal has dismissed Q.T.’s appeal against a conviction for sexually assaulting a woman in Enniscorthy in May 2008, rejecting challenges to a refusal to disclose her psychiatric records and to evidence of complaints she made shortly after the alleged assault.
Q.T. was convicted after an eight-day trial at Wexford Circuit Criminal Court on 12 July 2011. He was sentenced on 21 October 2011 to three years’ imprisonment, with the final two years suspended for three years subject to conditions. The appeal concerned the conviction; the judgment records no appeal against sentence.
The court said the complainant and her husband had been socialising with Q.T. that night. Unable to get a taxi, the couple returned to Q.T.’s house to stay. The complainant alleged that he sexually assaulted her in an upstairs bedroom while her husband slept downstairs.
During police questioning, Q.T. denied putting his fingers inside the complainant’s vagina. He acknowledged lying beside her in bed and touching her bare backside and vagina, and gave his account of their prior interactions and the circumstances of the contact.
On the records issue, the appeal court said the application had delayed the trial by at least two days and received careful consideration from the trial judge. But it described the request as speculative: the possibility that the records might help assess the complainant’s credibility or state of mind was not sufficient grounds for access. The court said that conclusion was enough to reject this ground and did not consider the appellant’s other arguments on it.
The second ground concerned evidence from two witnesses, identified in the judgment as D.K. and S.K. The complainant had phoned D.K., who collected her from Q.T.’s house and took her to his own home before she went on to hers. Q.T. argued that her complaints to the witnesses differed from her trial evidence. The appeal court acknowledged variations in how she described events, but said the trial judge was entitled to find that the complaints matched the main particulars of her testimony and could be admitted.
Both grounds failed. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal against conviction.