A MAN IN his forties has been found guilty of harassing four teenage girls on a bus, after telling them racist and sexist jokes before sexually assaulting one of them.

Anthony Quigley (45) of Roches Heights, Mitchelstown, Co Cork had pleaded not guilty to a charge of sexual assault, to four charges of harassment, a single charge of assault and one of threatening and abusive behaviour on 4 December 2018.

Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard that the teenagers were at the back of a bus on that date when Quigley sat next to them. The trial heard from the girls via video link.

One of the young women said that Quigley touched her inappropriately after she started coughing. He placed his hands on her shoulder before reaching for her thighs.

“I was terrified,” she said. “He started patting my thigh a few times throughout the journey. He was pushing close to me and breathing on me. He was invading my privacy. He smelled awful and he asked a few times if we liked his aftershave.”

Another teenager said Quigley repeatedly said she was sexy. He called her hot and insisted that she must have a boyfriend. She told the court she was terrified by the incident.

She said: “I was scared to go to the bus driver because I did not know him. He (Quigley) kept touching (my friend) on the thigh and the leg. He took out a piece of paper and gave me his phone number. He told me to call him and to send him compliments.”

The girl said as he left his seat he grabbed her hand and squeezed it very hardly.

“I felt scared. I did not know what he was going to do. I did not know who this man was or what he would do if he got angry.”

The girl gave the piece of paper to her teacher the following day and the principal alerted the gardaí.

‘Banter’

In his direct evidence Quigley said that he couldn’t understand why a case had been taken against him.

“If a fella is being brought to court for this then what is the world coming to?”

Quigley said he only engaged in banter with the teenagers and refuted suggestions that there was inappropriate contact. He insisted that inappropriate touching wasn’t his style.

He said the girls seemed pleased to chat.

“I could hear them talking in the back of the bus saying ‘Jesus he is a gas man’,” he said.

Quigley admitted telling the girls that he would take them to Disneyland if he won the lottery. However, he denied suggestions that he said they should share a room.

He also said in evidence that he suffered a brain injury thirteen years ago. The brain injury often gives people the impression that he is drunk, he claimed.

Guilty

A jury of four women and eight men found Quigley guilty on all seven counts on the indictment after three hours and twenty eight minutes of deliberations.

Judge Brian O’Callaghan thanked the jury for their “diligent” service. He remanded Quigley in custody until his sentencing hearing on 28 June next.

Judge O’Callaghan requested that all the relevant reports be made available to the courts for the sentencing hearing.

The court heard that Quigley is also due to be sentenced on that date in relation to another incident.

He was found guilty in February of an unprovoked attack which left a motorist fearing for her life after she was dragged from her car and beaten.

At a trial in Cork Circuit Criminal Court in February, a woman told the court that she was parking her car in a Cork town, on the afternoon of 5 February 2018 when Anthony Quigley approached her and started shouting swear words at her in the window.

She said Quigley lunged forward and assaulted her through the car window. She heard a “weird noise” and blood shot forward from her face. The female motorist said that she feared for her life after Quigley dragged her from her vehicle. She said Quigley put his hand over her mouth and she bit him trying to get him off her.

Quigley was found guilty of assault causing harm to the motorist and in engaging in threatening and abusive behavior towards her. He declined to give evidence in the case.

In his memorandum of interview with gardaí he said that the woman had shouted at him calling him a “paedophile” and a “c**t”. He claimed that she sustained injuries to her face when she fell outside the vehicle and hit her head off a flowerpot. The garda evidence was that no such flowerpot existed.

Quigley also told gardaí that the female motorist was “squealing like a pig” during the incident.

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