Man jailed after gun fired over boy’s head before horrific sexual attack
An East Cork man fired a gun over the head of a 12-year-old boy who was subjected to a horrific sexual assault and today the culprit was jailed for two-and-a-half years.
David Stanton, aged 64, of 5 Church Road, Ballinacurra, Co Cork, smiled at Cork Circuit Criminal Court as the sentence was imposed on him by Judge Brian O’Callaghan.
When described as the only guilty man in the courtroom, Stanton also smiled and shook his vigorously from side to side.
He denied the four charges of sexually assaulting the boy, who was aged 11 to 12 in 1990/1991 when the crimes were committed. A jury found him guilty in November by majority 11-1 verdicts and sentencing was put back until today.
Detective Sergeant Seán Leahy said there was grooming of the boy with cigarettes and sweets, blackmailing by Stanton that he would tell the boy’s parents he was smoking, and finally threatening to shoot the schoolboy if he did not engage in sexual acts.
The victim had been taken out shooting with the defendant where they fired his .22 rifle at bottles in a remote area. The accused had been in the army years before.
Det Sgt Leahy said the most serious sexual assault occured when Stanton pointed the rifle at the child and said: “I will shoot you.”
He made the injured party touch his erect penis and fired a gunshot over the injured party’s head. He then masturbated in front of the child.
Apart from the firing of the gun, this was the only one of the sexual assaults where he got the victim to touch his (Stanton’s) penis.
The first sexual assault saw him getting aggressive with the boy when they were out shooting. Stanton shouted at the boy that if he missed the target — a bottle in the distance — he would nibble his ears.
Det Sgt Leahy said that, just as the boy was about to fire his shot, Stanton kicked his leg to put him off and make him miss the target. At that, the accused jumped on the boy’s back and pressed his erect penis against his rear.
In the course of that and other sexual assaults, Stanton threatened the boy that he would “ride” him and explained what he meant.
Judge O’Callaghan referred to the defendant’s evil deeds and said the sexual assaults were horrific and he complimented the injured party of his victim impact statement.
The victim said afterwards he was disappointed with the sentence but what was most important to him was the jury finding Stanton guilty.
In his victim impact statement, the injured party said: “My innocence, dignity, and childhood were robbed as an 11-year-old boy by an evil monster called David Stanton who sexually abused me, degraded me, and did things to me that I didn’t want him to do. It not only destroyed my childhood but also my teenage years and most of my adult life.
“He said to me back then to be a real man. Children grow up and today I am speaking not as a fearful child, today I am a man — a real man coming forward to tell the truth. He is not a real man because he did not tell the truth. And real men do not sexually abuse, blackmail, threaten to kill or put unmerciful fear on innocent children.”
