Elderly man gets suspended sentence for sexually assaulting boy
An elderly Dublin man with no previous convictions has received a four-year suspended sentence for sexually assaulting a five-year-old boy.
The man (aged 72) told gardaí he had moved his head down the boy’s belly and pinched his private parts during a play fight before bedtime.
He claimed he used his fingers to make the child think he was biting his private parts.
The man pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexually assaulting the boy at a close friend’s home in the city on a date in early 2008.
Garda Sean Roche told Ms Gerardine Small BL, prosecuting, that the man had often stayed overnight in the boy’s room while he was babysitting.
Gda Roche said the boy’s mother was putting her then five-year-old to bed on January 24, 2008 and noticed him touching his private parts after a visit to the bathroom.
The boy told his mother that the man had done this to him.
The man later told gardaí in interview that he had been wrestling with the boy before bedtime one night when the child’s pyjama bottoms were pulled down, exposing his private parts.
The man said he told the boy he should get into bed or his “winky” would be bitten off.
He said: “I put my hand on his p***s to give the impression I was biting it off because that was the threat.”
The man added that the offence only happened once.
Mr Padraig O’Dwyer SC, defending, submitted to Judge Frank O’Donnell that his client had pleaded guilty because he hadn’t wanted to put the boy through a trial.
He submitted his client had never intended to sexually assault the child but admitted he had been reckless with his actions.
Mr O’Dwyer said the man wished to extend his apologies to the boy and his family.
Judge O’Donnell said that any sexual assault on a young person is “very serious indeed” but that this offence fell into “the lower scale of things I’ve had to deal with over the years.”
He suspended the entire sentence but said his concern was with the young victim and he hoped the boy would have little or no memory of the offence in years to come.
