Dublin Circuit Criminal Court<\/a> heard the girl was between eight and nine years old at the time.<\/p>\nWilliam Butler, with an address at Ferrymans Crossing, Seville Place, Dublin 1, pleaded guilty to sexual assault of the child on dates between 2020 and 2022.<\/p>\n
The court heard that the family of the child, who cannot be identified, wish for Butler to be named.<\/p>\n
A prosecuting garda told Aoife McNickle BL, prosecuting, that when the child told her family what was occurring, they reported the matter to the Garda and Butler was arrested.<\/p>\n
The abuse comprised touching the child\u2019s private area inside and outside her clothing.<\/p>\n
A victim impact report and play therapist report were handed into court but not read aloud.<\/p>\n
Butler has 21 previous convictions, the most recent from 1989, the majority for larceny and road traffic offences. He has no previous convictions for sexual offences.<\/p>\n
Paul Murray SC, defending, said his client had experienced some \u201cexternal punishment\u201d after the offences came to light when he was assaulted. There have been threats to burn down his house. He has had to spend time in cheap hotel accommodation and in his own car.<\/p>\n
He said Butler was a widower and had a prior work history. He has a heart condition and takes medication.<\/p>\n
Mr Murray said Butler is very regretful and sorry for what he did. He offers an apology to the young girl.<\/p>\n
Passing sentence on Friday, Judge Martin Nolan said Butler had sexually assaulted the child on more than 10 occasions. He noted the offending will have far-reaching effects on the child and was \u201cserious misbehaviour\u201d. He noted the guilty pleas as mitigation.<\/p>\n
The judge said Butler\u2019s prior record of conviction was not too relevant and he would probably not reoffend. He noted prison would be more difficult for Butler than for a younger person.<\/p>\n
He said, however, that Butler deserved a prison term. He set a headline sentence of six years, and taking into account mitigation, imposed a sentence of four years imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Judge Nolan said he was taking into account to a small degree the violence levied against Butler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 70-year-old man who sexually abused a young child has been jailed for four years. Dublin Circuit Criminal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,73168,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-143642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-criminal-courts","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115431663513770657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}