ACCUSED… Gabriel Tunney leaves Enniskillen Court
A PONY club instructor has been accused of being involved in a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old former pony club student, Fermanagh Crown Court has heard.
Gabriel Tunney (41), of Tattinweer, Enniskillen, denies six counts of engaging in sexual activity with a child between April 2010 and November 2010.
On the first day of the trial at Enniskillen Crown Court, the jury of ten men and two women viewed recorded video evidence given by the alleged victim in 2010 at the Child Investigations Unit in Enniskillen Police Station.
At the time of the alleged offences the defendant was married with a young child. It is alleged that he had full sexual intercourse with the victim.
The court heard that the defendant knew what age she was as she was no stranger to him – and that he taught her at the pony club from when she was 12.
In a video recording she said that she helped Tunney around his yard after she “quit school”.
The alleged offences took place at his yard where she had been working since April 2010 and matters came to a head in November 2010 when a complaint was made to police.
In the video played to the court, she said: “I was there for about two weeks when we started flirting with each other while we worked and when he left me home every day. I told him nothing would happen and that it would be wrong because he was a married man.
“He then said I think I’m going to cheat on my wife and I was really shocked he said that. We were washing one of the horses when he kissed me for the first time.
“His wife would stay away once a week in Strabane and one night he rang me and we talked on the phone for an hour,” she said.
“After that we just flirted a lot and were just kissing a bit. Then one night when Madeline (the accused’s wife) stayed away I stayed the night at his house and we got a Chinese and that was the first night we had sexual intercourse.
“Then it started to get really serious, the flirty texts were over and calls and kisses at the end of text messages. The first night I stayed before anything happened he told me he had fallen in love with me and told me I was very beautiful.
“I didn’t tell him anything back, it was totally new to me. We were both to blame for anything that happened. I continued to stay over so many different times and I was happy with it. We had sex and that’s the way it worked and I was totally fine with it.
She alleged that the defendant told her personal details regarding his marriage and claimed that they were having martial problems following the birth of their first child.
She claimed that Tunney told her he would leave his wife if it “wasn’t for their daughter”, and that the marriage was a “disaster”.
The alleged victim said she was left devastated and “heartbroken” after she allegedly found initimate texts between Tunney and his wife. She accused him of lying to her and using her for sex.
Days before she was due to go on a short trip to England she said she was too afraid to leave because “everything we had would be gone.”
The court was told that Tunney and the teenager travelled to three separate Dublin Horse Show qualifiers with a friend. Although three hotel rooms were booked, she claimed only two were used because she and Tunney slept in the same bed where they had sex.
“We had such a great week together and I got very attached to him, but it all changed when we went home.
“We were very stupid because we only used protection twice. I had to take ten pregnancy tests and three morning-after pills. I tried to stop what we were doing but he always came running back and I would go crawling back. I was in love with him.”
She described how they would have sex up to three times a night whenever they were alone together.
However, she then said they argued quite regularly and she threatened to tell his wife about their alleged relationship. Six months into the alleged sexual relationship, she confronted his wife saying that the runours were true. The following night she went back to their home in Tempo because she wanted him to admit their relationship.
It came to light when Tunney contacted police claiming she was causing a disturbance outside their home.
During the first day of the trial, the court heard that a sample of the defendant’s DNA was taken from the floor of the girl’s bedroom.
The jury was told by the prosecutor, Philip Mateer, that the defendant would claim that he never flirted with the girl, that he never shared a hotel room with her and that there were no romantic or flirty texts sent by him and that she had threatened to tell his wife that he had tried to kiss her.
The prosecutor said that Tunney would claim that the alleged victim was infatuated with him.
The alleged victim was to be cross-examined in the witness box at Enniskillen court today (Wednesday).
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