A 47-year-old woman has been convicted of sexually assaulting a young man after she allegedly “forced” herself on him, grabbing him by the bum and telling him she loved him.

Caroline Irwin, of Carrowshee Park, Lisnaskea, also allegedly tried to give the young man a love bite and to “snog” him.

She denied sexually assaulting the man but failed to turn up for her trial at Fermanagh Court yesterday (Wednesday) and was convicted in her absence.

Arrangements had been made for the victim to give his evidence from behind a screen so that he would not have to face his abuser in court.

However, defence solicitor Michael Fahy said he had received a call from Irwin that morning saying she was sick.

The man then gave his evidence without the screen.

District Judge Nigel Broderick made an order prohibiting publication of his name.

The man told the court that on November 2, last year, he was at home in bed when he got a text from a woman telling him she had £10 for him for cutting her lawn in July. He walked up to the woman’s house to collect the money. Irwin was there with the woman. The woman told him to carry a number of bags out to a waiting taxi for Irwin.

He described how Irwin asked him to give her his hands and told him: “You have lovely hands.” He said he pulled his hand out of her hand and just as he was walking out the door “she grabbed me by the backside, four of five times”. As he continued on out through the gate “she tried to give me a love bite” on the left side of the neck.

The man described how he moved his head to prevent Irwin from biting his neck.

“She tried to snog me but that didn’t work either,” he added.

The man told the court Irwin also grabbed him by the side, leaving a mark “like fingernails dug into me”.

He said he told her: “Please stop. I don’t like this.” He said the woman told Irwin to give him the £10. As Irwin was getting into the taxi she told him: “You’re lucky. You’re up here complaining about a tenner and I’ve lost my son.” The man told the court how Irwin put her arms around him and tried to snog him, telling him: “I know you very well and I love you.

“But I didn’t know her at all,” the man stated, adding that he pushed her away.

“She appeared high, really high. They were on drugs, the both of them,” he explained.

He said Irwin got into a taxi and he went to a friend who told him to go to the police.

Cross-examined by defence barrister Des Fahy the man said he would have been friendly with Irwin’s former fiance but had only known her for “20 minutes”.

Asked what was sexual about the assaults, he said that was when a woman tried to “force herself upon you against your will”, adding that “if you like the girl and you love her you might feel differently but I didn’t know her at all”.

He said that when Irwin tried to give him a love bite and snog him and “force herself on me” that “I was uncomfortable”.

Mr. Fahy suggested there was nothing sexual in what happened.

The man insisted that the way Irwin was forcing herself on him was sexual.

The investigating police officer told the court that he noticed scratch marks around the man’s stomach and when he went to a house in Lisnaskea to look for Irwin he found her “passed out” in a chair in the living room.

“She just wasn’t with it,” the constable explained.

He said there was a smell of alcohol and what he believed to be cannabis. The house was searched but nothing was found.

Mr. Fahy told the court he was not in a position to call any defence evidence. He said the court might feel that Irwin’s conduct amounted to an assault “but there’s certainly a question mark as to whether the circumstances in which that occurred were sexual”. It was not accepted that this was a sexual assault.

The District Judge said he was entirely satisfied that the man had given a “credible and reliable” account of what happened.

He said he was satisfied this was “deliberate touching by the defendant and it was of a sexual nature and he didn’t consent to it”.

The District Judge convicted Irwin of sexually assaulting the man.

He said she was known to the court and that rather than issue an immediate warrant for her arrest he would give her until April 28, to appear before him for sentencing. • Continued on page three