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A broadcaster has told the jury in his trial for the defilement of a child that he took the complainant’s number at a festival because “she was nice”.
The man (40), who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of engaging in sexual acts with a child under the age of 17 at locations in Dublin on dates between August and December 2010.
Under cross-examination on Friday by Eilis Brennan SC, the accused said he did not pass his phone to a security guard at the Oxegen festival for the complainant to put her number into it. He said she had beckoned to him, they chatted and then “I gave her my number, and I took hers”.
When asked what his motive was in getting her number, the man replied: “I guess it was at a festival. She waved and made eye contact. We had a little chat. It was a prominently over-18s festival. She was nice, and I took her number.”
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“Is it fair to say you fancied her?” Ms Brennan asked.
“Reasonable,” replied the man, who denied that they kissed at the festival.
He said the complainant “touched base” with him a few weeks later but he could not recall when. He insisted she told him by text that she was 18, but that he “can’t recall the texts exactly” or when specifically this subject was discussed.
He denied that the complainant told him she was 16 soon after they met at the festival. He insisted that she told him she was 18.
In previous evidence to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, the complainant said she told the man she was 16 before they engaged in sexual activity. The man was then 27.
The accused said they texted “very infrequently” and that the nature of their contact between July 2010 and January 2011 was “minimal”.
He told Ms Brennan he met the complainant a few weeks after the Oxegen festival for lunch but could not recall who organised the meeting. He said she then told him she was 18 and doing her Leaving Certificate.
When asked by Ms Brennan if this was a date and how he perceived the nature of the relationship, he replied that he “hadn’t categorised it”.
He said the complainant suggested they met for lunch in late January 2011, and he discovered she was 17 at this point.
Counsel then asked the man why he was shocked and surprised when the complainant told him she was 17 if there had been minimal interaction between them. “She lied about her age. There is a difference between saying you are 18 and revealing that is not the case,” he replied.
When asked by Ms Brennan if he was cross, the man said he was “shocked”.
Counsel then noted the man said he took the woman to his workplace once following the lunch in January 2011, but “on your account, you’ve found out she’s lied about her age, but you still bring her”.
She put it to the man that the complainant could only have described his workplace, and a stairwell where a sexual encounter allegedly happened, in detail as she had been in there. The man said he never went into the stairway while working at that office.
Ms Brennan put the woman’s evidence that she and the man would discuss the first alleged incident in the stairwell afterwards. He denied that the conversation had taken place.
He pointed out he had provided eight phones and their pin numbers to gardaí, which included messages from a later period when he had a “physical relationship” with the complainant, and there were no messages of an “overtly sexual nature”.
Ms Brennan replied there is “nothing wrong that you did engage in a sexual relationship” after the time period in which the alleged offences occurred.
Earlier, in direct evidence, the man said he met friends on December 26th, 2011, while home for Christmas. He said he booked a room in a Dublin hotel as he may have ended up “intoxicated and sloppy” and did not want to be “traipsing in and waking up my parents”. He said there was no one in the room with him.
The jury also heard evidence of separate text exchanges between the man and the complainant and between the man and several of his friends on December 26th, 2011.
The man agreed with his counsel that he booked a hotel room in June 2012, adding that he and the complainant had stayed there that night. He said it was “possible” that they went for drinks but “that was the only time we were in a hotel room”.
He agreed that he met the complainant at a music festival in Spain in July 2012. He also told defence counsel that he had been in the complainant’s home after this date. The man also said he met the woman at a music festival in Cork in 2019 and accepted that they remained in contact by social media until December 2020.
The trial continues.