Man jailed for 18 months for sexual assault of girl, 13


A man who convinced a child to play sexualised games of truth or dare and later coerced her into sexual intercourse has being jailed for 18 months.

Graham Doyle, 31, was a teenager when he sexually assaulted the then 13-year-old.

During a relationship which he told her to keep secret he repeatedly sexually assaulted her.

He pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to four sample counts of sexual assault and one count of oral rape in Dublin on dates between 1 August 2004 and 31 March 2005.

Doyle of North Circular Road, Dublin, has four previous convictions for offences of defilement of a child under the age of 15 which date back to 2011.

He met the teenage victim in that case on a social networking site while claiming to still be a teenager himself.

The rape victim went to gardaí in 2013 after reading about Doyle’s convictions for defilement of a child.

Mr Justice Michael White sentenced Doyle to five years imprisonment, but suspended the final three-and-a-half years of that sentence on condition that he be of good behaviour and engage with probation services for the entirety of that suspended period.

Mr Justice White said that the previous convictions, which post date these offences, re-enforce that Doyle “had improper or deviant sexual tendencies”.
He acknowledged that Doyle had used “severe psychological coercion” on the victim in this case.

He said the aggravating factors in the case were the seriousness of the offences, the impact they had on the victim and her age at the time of the offences.

Mr Justice White said the mitigating factors were the early plea of guilty, Doyle’s “very genuine remorse”, his age at the time of the offences and his lack of previous convictions at the time.

He said Doyle was a minor at the time of the offending and there is an important public policy issue in sentencing an adult for their actions as a child.