Murder accused teenager claims victim sexually abused him
A Leitrim teenager charged with murdering a 73-year-old man told investigating Gardaí the pensioner had sexually abused him when he was younger, a court heard today.
Brendan McGovern (aged 19) of Killahurk, Carrigallen has pleaded not guilty to murdering John Golden on October 6, 2010 in Co Cavan.
The Central Criminal Court has heard that the pensioner was found unconscious a month earlier in his prefabricated house in the rural area of Nedd, Doogarry, Killeshandra.
Sergeant Gabriel Bell testified today that he and a colleague went to Mr McGovern’s home on September 10 that year as part of their investigation into an assault on Mr Golden.
The defendant’s father took them to his son at a horse-riding area about a mile away, where they asked him where he had been on September 6, the day before Mr Golden was found unconscious.
“He was very quiet, very sullen and very withdrawn,” said the sergeant. “He said he was in the pub and a few places like that and was home at 9pm.”
However his parents confirmed that he was not home until 2.45am on the 7th and the questioning continued at the defendant’s house.
“Brendan was there sitting on the couch, kind of curled up,” he continued, confirming that his parents were also there.
“We were aware that he’d had a suicide attempt two days earlier. We asked why he was so down,” explained Sgt Bell. “He said he did know John Golden. He said to us that he had been sexually abused by John Golden.”
Mr McGovern said the pensioner had carried out the abuse in various places, including a pub, when he was 13 or 14 years of age. He had never told anyone about the abuse, he said.
The sergeant said that the then 17-year-old garage assistant told them of the various pubs he’d been in on the 6th and with whom he had been drinking.
“He had been drinking most of the afternoon,” he said.
He said that at one stage he saw John Golden outside a pub in which he was drinking.
“He started smiling in the window at me. That made me mad,” he said. “It had been building up in me.”
He said that he stopped at John Golden’s house on his way home later.
“He was outside. It was dark,” said the teenager. “He said: ‘Come in to the room for a minute’. I went in to give him a slap. I was fed up with his taunting.”
He said he followed the pensioner into his bedroom and that Mr Golden took off his trousers before going into the kitchen to get a condom.
“He bent over for me to have sex with him. I thumped him with my fist on the arse as hard as I could,” he continued. “I put it (the condom) on my hand before I hit him.”
Sgt Bell asked him how he felt when he heard the pensioner was in hospital.
“Not too good,” he replied. “But I got my own back anyway.”
Sgt Bell agreed with Patrick Gageby SC, defending, that the gardaí had asked a number of other young men about suggestions of impropriety regarding John Golden. He agreed that those questions “hadn’t come from nowhere”.
He said he also knew that Gardaí had, years earlier, seized videos from Mr Golden’s home that he had been showing to teenaged boys.
“We were looking for a person who had a grievance against him,” he explained.
The sergeant also agreed that Mr McGovern’s father had told them that the teenager had not been himself, had been angry and acting erratically for the six weeks before the assault.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Paul Carney and a jury of six men and five women.
