An English tour operator has told a jury that, after a young distressed girl climbed out of a car window at Powerscourt Waterfall, he was attacked by her father.
Mr Richard Edwin Ashley told the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury that the girl ran initially to his wife. She then disappeared for a time until her father left the area. Then she reappeared from the woods and ran again into his wife's arms.
Mr Ashley said in reply to Ms Aileen Donnelly (with Alex Owens SC), prosecuting, that the girl was "distressed beyond belief". It was day two of the trial of a 41-year-old south Dublin man who has pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting his 13-year-old daughter, restricting her personal liberty on November 21st, 2001, and assaulting Mr Ashley, causing him harm on the same date.
Mr Ashley said he was in the area with his wife planning a new tour for his customers when the incidents he described happened.
The girl ran towards them shouting "Help me, help me" and he thought at first it was a stunt "like something from a Hollywood film set" but then saw the look of fear on her face. She had come from a red car he had noticed earlier in two different locations.
The accused followed in a very angry mood and launched "a tirade" at the couple because they were "English and Protestant" and claimed the English had caused all Ireland's problems.
Mr Ashley said he and his wife told the accused his wife was Catholic in an attempt to mollify him. He went to use his mobile telephone to contact his office in England so that help could be summoned, but the accused became even more agitated.
"I quickly put the phone back in my pocket, but he then set about me, and I was pushed back into a bramble bush with the accused on top of me," Mr Ashley said. He said his Rolex watch was broken and his glasses pushed off his head.
A consultant psychiatrist, Dr Damian Mohan, told Mr Owens that the accused had a psychiatric history going back to 1986 when he became obsessed with religion and began acting strangely.
Dr Mohan said the accused developed "grandiose" ideas that he had returned to Earth and was "a superior being". He was treated residentially and released but relapsed again within days and was readmitted to hospital.
The accused was hospitalised again in 1988 when he took to threatening violence. A further spell of hospitalisation took place in 1990.
The accused was diagnosed as suffering a schizo-defect in which he lost all sense of reality and believed he had special powers. He had no history of violence.
The trial continues before Judge Frank O'Donnell and a jury of nine women and three men.