A doctor who sexually assaulted a nurse after a staff Christmas party, escaped a jail sentence yesterday after a court heard his career was effectively "dead in the water".
Éamon Walsh (39), originally from Ballina, Co Mayo, but now living in Dublin, was convicted by a jury last December of sexually assaulting the then 22-year-old nurse on December 13th, 2003.
The doctor, who is also a qualified vet, was found guilty by a jury of nine men and three women who returned the unanimous guilty verdict at Limerick Circuit Court on December 15th.
Eight days later, the Irish Medical Council temporarily struck Walsh's name off the list of medical practitioners, pending the results of an inquiry by the fitness-to-practise-committee.
Since his conviction, Walsh has also been placed on the Register for Sex Offenders, where his name is to remain for a period of five years.
Before imposing a three-year suspended sentence at Limerick Circuit Court yesterday, Judge Carroll Moran said he expected Walsh would be permanently struck off the Medical Register and added that the doctor would have to live with the fact that he had been branded a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Judge Moran said it was "imperative" that Walsh receive cognitive therapy, and said he would be in a better position to receive treatment outside of jail.
The judge added if Walsh was sent to prison he might be coralled with other sex offenders, who tend to "feed of each others' deviance".
Before the suspended sentence was imposed yesterday, Judge Moran was told that Walsh had inherited certain personality traits that caused him to misread signs and certain situations.
Judge Moran accepted that this evidence was the finding of leading psychiatrist Dr Patricia Casey from UCD, but added that it could not be used as a defence.
During the trial the victim, who is now aged 24, said she awoke on the morning of December 13th to find him lying naked in bed beside her.
The court heard that Walsh had shared a taxi from a party with the victim and her housemates but that he had not been invited to stay in their house.
The victim said she woke up to find Walsh aroused and that her pyjama bottoms and underwear had been lowered. She insisted that she had not consented to any of Walsh's actions.
Counsel for the State John O'Sullivan told the court that the injured party had rebuffed overtures made by Walsh at a house party earlier that night.
Judge Moran described what happened as an "invasion of the injured party's personal privacy" and said he was quite satisfied that she had done nothing to encourage Walsh.