A MAN launched a foul-mouthed tirade of abuse in court after he was unanimously convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl.
After deliberating for just over three hours, the jury at Craigavon Crown Court found 28-year-old Gerard McKenna guilty of raping and sexually assaulting his victim on December 23 2019.
McKenna was also unanimously convicted of sexual activity with a second complainant who was 15 at the time, offering to supply class A cocaine and two counts of child abduction on the same date.
As Judge Patrick Lynch QC was thanking the jury for their services, McKenna called out from the dock that they were “f****** corrupt adding: “Mark my words, get ready for the aftermath" and “there’s going to be serious retribution for this.”
“There’s only one low life scum here, everybody knows who that is,” Judge Lynch told McKenna.
During the week long trial the jury heard how McKenna and another person encountered the two girls on the Lagan towpath, plying them with vodka and offering them cocaine and diazepam.
An adult who knew the rape victim gave evidence saying that he told McKenna the girl was “only 12” but he told him “so f***.”
The jury heard how McKenna sexually assaulted and raped her, later taking a train to Belfast where he sexually assaulted the 15-year-old girl by kissing her.
Giving evidence on his own behalf McKenna, listed as no fixed abode but who had a previous address at Rockville Street in Belfast, labelled the allegations against him as “absolutely disgusting” and his accusers as “mutts.”
He also lambasted the “corrupt system” that had put him on trial, claiming that he believed his victim was 17.
Under cross examination from prosecuting counsel Nicola Auret, who put a number of inconsistencies between his accounts to the police and to the jury, McKenna shouted at the lawyer that she was “deliberately trying to provoke me and get a reaction out of me.”
“I stand before this court with no wrong doing whatsoever.....it’s absurd, it’s preposterous and shouldn’t even be in a court at all,” he said.
Remanding him into custody, Judge Lynch adjourned passing sentence until a pre-sentence report has been compiled.
