A 49-YEAR-OLD Co Wexford man has been convicted of three counts of sexual assault on a young girl dating back to the mid 1990s.

He was convicted of sexually assaulting the girl twice in the summer of '95, when she was aged seven, and once in the summer of '96, when she was aged eight.

All three incidents occurred in a mobile home that the man was sharing with the girl's older sister, his partner at the time, in a location in Co Wexford.

She said the first two incidents occurred during the same six-day stay in the summer of '95, when she was sleeping in the small, spare bedroom of the mobile home on her own, with her sister and the accused in the other bedroom.

She said that at some stage the accused came in and she woke up to find him with his hands under her clothes and on her private parts. The same thing happened again towards the end of her stay.

During the summer of '96, when the girl was aged eight, she stayed in the mobile home again, but the partition between the two rooms had been taken down so she slept in the same room as her sister and the accused.

She said she was in a narrow bed with a niece of the accused and again she awoke to find him with his hands on her private parts, while her sister and his niece slept.

The young woman complained to the Gardai in 2007 and Philip Sheahan, for the State, addressed the gap between the incidents and the complaint.

Mr Sheahan told the jury that the offences occurred when she was a young girl and that while a gap of 11 or 12 years is a long time it is 'not unusual for delay to be an issue in such cases'.

He also pointed out that even though the young woman said there were other people, including her sister, in close proximity during the assaults they were asleep and so there was no corroborating evidence.

Mr Sheahan then addressed the issue of why she didn't call out to her sister when she was asleep in the next room – only separated by a very thin dividing wall – in '95 and asleep in the same room in '96.

Mr Sheahan told the jury that she was just seven and eight-years-old at the time and she was scared.

He also pointed to the statement that the accused gave voluntarily to the Gardai and asked the jury to scrutinise the 'small aspects of it'.

Mr Sheahan pointed out that he claimed in his statement that the young girl had never stayed in the mobile home with him and her older sister, but had only ever stayed in the cottage with relatives of his and their daughters when she came to visit. The girl and her sister had said she stayed in both during her visits.

The accused also said that there had not been a thin partition wall in the mobile home that was later taken down, saying if that had been done it would have caused the roof to 'cave in'.

This was also directly contradicted by both the young girl and her sister in their direct evidence.

Mr Sheahan said the account given by the accused to the Gardai is 'incredible' and that after hearing from the young woman that they should have no doubt as to who was telling the truth.

'She's giving evidence in this case because what she's telling you in her evidence happened. Why else would she?' he asked.

Colman Cody, for the accused, said the young woman was alleging that these incidents happened in 'the very cramped confines' of a mobile home that his client shared with her sister.

Mr Cody asked the jury to consider whether it was ' credible that on two separate occasions he would creep into the room next door and during that time she would not call out to her sister who was literally next door'.

He pointed out that she said in her evidence that she wasn't expecting it to happen, but he said that in the summer of '95 she said it happened twice and the second occasion ' she must have known something was going to happen, but she pretended to be asleep as he again perpetrated these heinous acts'.

Mr Cody said the girl's older sister had made it ' abundantly clear' in her evidence that there was nothing to alert her that anything untoward had happened and she also said she was a very light sleeper at the time of the incident in '96 as she was pregnant and getting up frequently to go to the toilet. He said these were details, but 'crucial details'.

Mr Cody also pointed out, referring to the long delay before the girl made a complaint to the Gardai, that there was no evidence that the accused had threatened her, exerted any influence over her or told her not to tell anyone. ' All of that is strangely absent in this case,' he said.

He said that she continued to go back to the location of the incidents every year until 2000 and that she has led a normal life; getting a good Leaving Cert, getting a job and now training for another profession.

'Where's the anger, the betrayal and hurt?' asked Mr Cody. 'It's not there and there's something not quite right about this I suggest.'

However, the jury of 12 took just about an hour to return a unanimous verdict of guilty on all three counts of sexual assault.