As if the league image isn't bad enough
Jail threat to rape trial 'football fans'
Friday January 28th 2005
A SENIOR judge threatened to jail members of the public after accusing them of behaving like "football fans" when the verdict was returned in a rape trial.
Mr Justice Paul Carney made his comments yesterday at the sentencing of a Brazilian man found guilty of raping a colleague at a staff party in a Clare hotel.
Mr Carney said he considered excluding members of the public from the gallery when the unanimous guilty verdict arrived yesterday.
He ordered one woman sitting next to the victim to leave the court after he saw her sniggering.
The trial - at the Limerick sitting of the Central Criminal Court - concluded last night when the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict.
The 27-year-old hotel porter denied raping the 23-year-old woman at the Clare Inn Hotel, Newmarket on Fergus, on December 2, 2003. He denied a charge of burglary on the same date.
The jury heard the parties, who worked at a Limerick hotel, went to the party separately. Evidence was heard the woman was raped in her room after she drank a lot. She recalled the room door opening and a man leaving after raping her, but she did not see his face. She conceded she initially had named another colleague who she thought raped her.
Mr Justice Carney adjourned sentencing until March 7 pending a probation report on the accused.
Karl Hanlon
© Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/
