An American real estate agent has admitted touching inside and outside a young man\u2019s shorts during a sexual assault in the sauna at Dublin\u2019s Shelbourne Hotel.<\/p>\n
Bryan McNeill (55), of K Street, Boston, Massachusetts, had lodged \u20ac30,000, allowing him to return to the United States in March.<\/p>\n
He pleaded guilty when he came back for his hearing in Dublin District Court on Monday. <\/p>\n
Judge Paula Murphy heard the businessman had \u201cmisread the situation\u201d until the victim stood up and told him to stop.<\/p>\n
Sentencing was adjourned until Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Det Gda Cathal Ryan told the court how the injured party, a 19-year-old college student, was staying at the five-star hotel with a family member and used the gym and afterwards went to the sauna.<\/p>\n
He later reported to garda\u00ed that the older man sexually assaulted him in the sauna.<\/p>\n
In his statement, the student said McNeill was rubbing his shoulder and upper torso with his right hand and \u201cslid\u201d his hands under his shorts to grope his buttocks from within his shorts and then, with his left hand, grabbed his private parts outside the shorts.<\/p>\n
McNeill was identified as a suspect and he gave garda\u00ed an account claiming it was a consensual interaction, but the complainant stated it was not consensual.<\/p>\n
The court heard McNeill was due to return to the US a day after the incident, but attended the Garda station and remained in the jurisdiction for several days pending the Director of Public Prosecutions\u2019 decision that he be charged.<\/p>\n
Det Gda Ryan said McNeill had no prior convictions in Ireland or any other jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
The garda agreed with Ois\u00edn Clarke, defending, that McNeill was completely co-operative and had changed his travel plans as a result of the investigation.<\/p>\n
The student came to the hearing to read out his victim impact statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just enjoying the luxury of being in the hotel and having a general conversation; I did not initiate what happened,\u201d he told the court.<\/p>\n
He said he was in shock afterwards and said it took weeks to process what happened. He could not talk about it when his parents asked how he was.<\/p>\n
He said his family thought he was happier before and he was more irritable now, and he said he was not ready to face what happened, but wanted it to disappear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do wonder why this was done to me. I am friendly and social, but definitely more worried than I used to be,\u201d he told Judge Murphy.<\/p>\n
He said he became withdrawn and believed the assault was partly a reason for failing a college exam during summer.<\/p>\n
In court, married businessman McNeill nodded to confirm he was pleading guilty to sexual assault.<\/p>\n
He did not address the court, and his husband provided a letter confirming McNeill\u2019s health had declined due to stress and he had suffered from vertigo since the incident.<\/p>\n
Mr Clarke said his client came from humble beginnings and was the first in his family to achieve a third-level education and \u201cdragged himself up by his bootstraps\u201d from a young age, eventually becoming a real estate agent.<\/p>\n
The barrister said saunas had a certain resonance within the accused\u2019s community.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe thought something was going on that wasn\u2019t, and he acted completely inappropriately, and he apologises unreservedly,\u201d Mr Clarke said.<\/p>\n
McNeill asked his barrister to express remorse on his behalf.<\/p>\n
Mr Clarke noted that the complainant had not yet attended counselling costing \u20ac1,200; McNeill was willing to pay, along with a donation to charity or an additional sum to the student.<\/p>\n
Mr Clarke furnished a High Court judgment from a more serious, but unrelated, sexual assault case, which allowed the Probation of Offenders Act, sparing the accused in that case a criminal conviction.<\/p>\n
The barrister asked Judge Murphy to exercise that discretion in McNeill\u2019s case because a conviction could have \u201ccatastrophic consequences\u201d for him in the US in terms of his livelihood and other features of his life.<\/p>\n
Judge Murphy adjourned the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An American real estate agent has admitted touching inside and outside a young man\u2019s shorts during a sexual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[18049,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,20513,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-79936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","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-massachusetts","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79936","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=79936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79936\/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=79936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}