A DUBLIN man will be sentenced later this week for one of the “most repulsive” sex offences ever encountered at the Central Criminal Court.
Mr Justice Paul Carney remanded Stephen “Rossi” Walsh (62), Belgrave Road, Rathgar, in custody pending sentence on Friday for raping a nine-year-old girl in the early 1990s.
Mr Justice Carney commented that the “guess-the-fruit-and-veg” game, in which Walsh tricked his blindfolded victim in order to abuse her, was one of the most repulsive sex offences he has ever encountered in his 18-year tenure as judge and that he could see no mitigating factors in the defence case.
The now 25-year-old victim said in a statement read out by Isobel Kennedy SC, prosecuting, that she had been attending counselling since 2004 for post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and feelings of shame and self-loathing.
She said aside from “severe physical pain and soreness”, she had felt confused and fearful after the rapes. She described feeling scared for her sister the day Walsh took the two girls in his car to a beach area and raped his victim behind a rock during a game of “hide-and-seek”.
The young woman described her relief when she learned her attacker had been jailed for arson in a television news report in 1993, but said she “felt sick” when she heard of his release some years later.
She said she had to take several days off work when she saw him by chance leaning on a wall in Dublin last year ahead of the case.
Being called a liar under cross-examination and waiting on the jury’s decision at the trial’s end was the “worst time” of her life, she said.
“What happened to me has not gone away, it will never go away, I am a victim of real child abuse,” she stated.
The jury, on day four of the trial, found Walsh guilty of the offences between January 1st, and November 9th, 1993.
Mr Justice Carney told John Phelan SC, defending, he could not see any mitigating factors in the case and remanded Walsh in custody pending the sentence outcome on Friday.