WOMEN wept in the public gallery at Belfast Crown Court yesterday as they listened to a 13-year-old girl describe how she had been "interfered with" by an elderly man.
The child, seen in court via closed-circuit television, was giving evidence in the trial of Mr William Brady (62) who denies two charges of procuring an abortion and seven of indecent assault. The offences were allegedly committed between 1992 and 1994 at the disused St Nicholas's High School in Carrickfergus where Mr Brady, from Donegall Way, Carrickfergus, was employed as caretaker.
The court has heard that a number of young girls used to visit Mr Brady at the school for "tea and a chat" and to smoke cigarettes which he provided. The girl told the court that in October 1994, when she was 12, she had been at the school and Mr Brady had been playing with her fingers. "He said `You look like you are pregnant by the colour of your nails'. I said I could not be pregnant because I had done nothing".
Later that day when she returned to the school he had taken her upstairs to a classroom and said: "We will get rid of this baby for you." Then he pulled down her clothes and indecently assaulted her as well as having oral sex.
"I felt frightened a bit and I told him to let me up. I was punching and kicking at him." The girl added that on the landing Mrs Brady had shown her a syringe and told her that was what he used to give abortions. "He also told me he used to give tablets to people who were pregnant, and he said he had given an abortion to another girl I knew."
Cross-examined by Mr Andrew, Donaldson QC, for the defence, the girl said that until then she, had really liked going to the school. The witness said she stopped going to the school after the incident but she agreed she did not tell her friends why.
Mr Donaldson suggested she had invented the whole story. The girl replied: "You can think what want, but I am sticking to the truth here."