A woman has been awarded €350,000 compensation for being sexually abused by a neighbour when she was a young girl.
Noelle Doyle was just a young girl of seven years when her former neighbour – Sean Connolly of Kilkea in County Kildare – used the ploy of repairing her bicycle to lure her into his garden shed and sexually abuse her. The sexual assaults continued for a five-year period in the late 1970s and early 1980s until Noelle told her friends about her neighbour´s behaviour, and her friends told Noelle to confide in her parents.
Noelle´s parents believed what their daughter told them, but it took more than twenty years before Noelle felt sufficiently able to report the assaults to the gardaí – during which time she had suffered from depression and a post traumatic stress disorder, and developed a drinking problem.
The gardaí investigated the alleged sexual assaults and a prosecution was brought against Connolly in 2011. At his trial at Naas Circuit Court, Connolly pleaded guilty to six sample charges of sexual assault and was sentenced to two years in prison – following which Noelle made a claim for compensation for being sexually abused by her neighbour.
With liability for her psychological injuries already proven, Noelle´s claim was sent to the High Court for an assessment of damages. The case was heard by Mr Justice Kevin Cross, who said that Noelle had done society a great service by informing her parents, the gardaí and the courts of her former neighbour´s behaviour.
Describing Noelle as “an admirable person of courage”, Judge Cross awarded Noelle €350,000 compensation for being sexually abused by a neighbour, after which Noelle issued a statement urging other victims of sexual abuse to come forward and “stand up for the little children that we once were”.
Noelle acknowledged that she had endured a “hard, long struggle” to come to terms with the sexual assaults she had experienced, to go through the criminal courts to see justice done and the civil courts to obtain compensation for being sexually abused by a neighbour, but she hoped that the size of the settlement would act as an encouragement to others who had suffered the same trauma as she had.