A MAN told a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday he was buggered by a garda, who was a family friend, on several occasions when he had just entered his teens.
The man, who is 24 and from the midlands, also described other sexual acts which he claimed the accused man carried out on him in a flat in a midlands town. He alleged the offences happened from 1987 onwards for some years. He claimed he was given Pounds 3 or Pounds 4 after one of the alleged incidents.
The garda, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has denied 12 charges of buggery, indecent assault and gross in decency between February 1987 and February 1990.
He has also pleaded not guilty to four charges of buggery with a male person, two of indecent assault with a male person under 15 years of age and six of committing acts of gross indecency.
In reply to Mr George Birmingham, prosecuting, the alleged victim said he had gone on holiday to Jersey with the accused in both 1991 and 1992.He said he was subject to Garda attention in November 1994 over a larceny allegation. He then went to England for about a year. The accused came over to England to see him on four occasions and stayed in a hotel. They had a meeting at a guest house, the alleged victim said.
The man said he also met the accused when he returned to Ireland. The accused would ring him to speak about the case, he said.
Cross-examined by Mr Barry White SC, defending, the man agreed he was arrested on November 9th, 1994, and admitted stealing Pounds 300 from another man's house. He denied he had also been charged with other offences and said he had no other previous convictions.
He did accept he came under suspicion on another occasion for stealing.
Opening the case earlier, Mr Birmingham said the accused man was a member of the Garda Siochana.
Mr Birmingham said that since 1993 homosexual acts such as buggery were not illegal where there was consent between adults. In this case the question of consent did not arise because the alleged acts happened with a person then under 15 years of age.
Consent was irrelevant in any sexual act involving an alleged victim under 15 as the law did not accept a person of that age could consent.
Mr Birmingham said that if the jury decided the acts alleged in the charges did occur, then it would find the accused guilty of these charges.
He said the offence of gross indecency was created by the English parliament in the 1860s as it was felt there was a gap in the law where sexual acts did not amount to buggery.
The trial before Judge Joseph Mathews and the jury of eight women and four men is expected to continue for three days.