A woman ran screaming from the Central Criminal Court calling her alleged rapist a "scumbag" after he was acquitted by direction because handwritten statements went missing from a Garda station.
The 25-year-old accused man had pleaded not guilty to raping and sexually assaulting her at his Dublin city centre home on September 25th, 2001. It was the second day of the trial.
Mr Justice Éamon de Valera directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty following an application by defence counsel Padraic O'Higgins SC (with Róisín Lacey).
Mr O'Higgins told Mr Justice de Valera that the absence of four original handwritten statements from the alleged victim meant he could not adequately cross-examine her over inconsistencies between her evidence under oath and that given in the typed statements presented to the court.
He said his solicitors had contacted the State prosecution solicitors in early December 2002 for copies of the statements and had to send a further letter in June the following year to advise that they still were not in possession of them. The defence team never received the statements.
Hugo Hynes SC (with Remy Farrell SC), prosecuting, said the statements were available for inspection when the book of evidence was first served on the defence.
He said gardaí in Kilmainham station noted the statements were still in a filing cabinet in September or October 2003 but when they looked for them again that November, they were missing.
Mr Hynes explained that statements from the accused were also missing and were believed to have been lost along with the alleged victim's statements while the station was moving offices.
Mr Justice de Valera told the jury of eight men and four women that original statements from the complainant "were lost by gardaí together with other exhibits and there is no prospect of them being retrieved".
He said that since the absence of four such "important matters of evidence", which had been sought at an early stage in the case, "removed a weapon from the armour of the defence" and would prejudice the accused, he ruled that it would be "unsafe for the trial to continue".
The alleged victim then ran out of the court in a very distressed state, screaming that it had taken her four years to get here and calling the accused a "scumbag".
Mr Justice de Valera said Mr O'Higgins wished to use these statements to question the woman's credibility but in their absence he could not see him doing this and that "prejudiced the possibility of the accused mounting a full defence".
Mr Justice de Valera then formerly discharged the accused from the charges against him.