A JUDGE IN Cork agreed yesterday that a man who has been jailed for four years for raping a 12-year-old girl at a funfair in 1989 can be named publicly.
51-year-old Gerard Williams from Churchfield in Cork was convicted of raping the girl in a caravan at the funfair which is owned by his family. He was sentenced to four years in the retrial after a previous jury could not reach a verdict.
In her victim impact statement, the woman, now in her 30s, said she had been “very confused and scared” at the time.
“It is only now that I am older and I have kids of my own that I realise I was just a little girl who was very innocent at the time. I hadn’t got a clue of what he was doing – I thought he was stabbing me at first and I was very afraid,” she said.
At the sentencing earlier this month, the woman was not asked if she wanted the man to be named and so his details could not be made public. She returned to court with State barrister Tim O’Leary yesterday morning to tell a judge that she would be happy for him to be named publicly and the judge agreed.
The woman said in her victim impact statement that she did not regret coming forward and thanked a local garda for her continued support. “I do not forgive Ger Williams for what he has done to me,” she also said. “I don’t know if I will in the future.”
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