A 30-year-old man has been jailed for 16 months for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in the early hours of Christmas morning.
Judge Francis Comerford handed down a 26-month sentence with the last 10 months suspended for Nitish Kalia, an Indian national, in Ennis Circuit Court on Thursday.
Kalia, formerly of Susanville Road in Drumcondra, Dublin 9, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the girl on December 25, 2018. The court heard that she was staying with the family as a guest in Co Clare over the Christmas period and contacted to the girl on Tik-Tok social media platform.
Judge Comerford said it was a serious crime and a child should be safe in his house on Christmas morning. He praised the courage of the girl who was in court for the sentencing hearing.
In her victim impact statement, the girl turned to Mr.Kalia and said, “I hope this was your first and last time doing something like this. I hope that if you have a daughter in years to come that no one treats her like what you did to me,” reports Irish Times.
The girl said that she used to count down the days until Christmas, but now “every Christmas brings back the bad dream that I can’t get rid of”, reports Irish Times.
Det Garda Conor Flaherty said that early in the morning, Kalia texted the girl asking if he could come into her room and she said no. He said that Kalia entered the room anyway and get into bed that the girl shared with her younger brother.
The detective said the girl explained that the sexual assault continued for 20 minutes and consisted of the man touching three separate areas of her body outside of her clothing. The girl texted her mother while Kalia was in the room, but she didn’t wake up right away.
When her mother woke up, she saw the messages and ran to her daughter’s room before kicking Kalia off the property.
Kalia, who will now be on the sex offenders register, has no criminal record and was in Ireland to study at Griffith College in Dublin. Det Flaherty said Kalia’s student visa expired in 2020 and he has no status in the state. He agreed not to contest any deportation proceedings upon his release from prison.
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