ALLEGED ASSAULT ON GIRL

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27373, 11 June 1954, Page 3

ALLEGED ASSAULT ON GIRL

MAN COMMITTED FOR TRIAL

David George Palmer, aged 25, a labourer, elected trial by jury and pleaded not guilty when he appeared before Mr Raymond Ferner, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday, on a charge that on May 1 at Coutts Island he assaulted a girl aged 11.

He was committed to the Supreme Court for trial and was allowed bail in his own recognisance of £25. Senior-Sergeant A. B. Collinge prosecuted, and Palmer was represented by Mr H. S. Thomas.

The girl, giving evidence*, said she was cycling home along the Coutts Island road when a man grabbed her bicycle and tipped her off. She cut her knee. The man sat on her while she was lying on the road and said he would hit her on the chin if she did not answer his questions. He then dragged her across the road; let her go and threw her bicycle in the ditch; grabbed her again and tried to put her over the gate into a paddock. A car came round the corner and the man jumped over the gate and ran away alongside the hedge. The car stopped, picked her up and. took her home. The girl said that the man who attacked her was Palmer. At that time he had a small moustache but he did not have it when she saw him at the police station and identified him. The girl’s mother gave evidence on the condition of the girl when she was taken home by the motorist and the effect of the experience on her nervous condition.

Constable G. Lithgow said that Palmer, in a statement, denied the allegations made by the girl. He admitted that the description given by the girl fitted him. He said he knew the girl and the girl knew him. He had spent 10s to 15s on liquor in the Belfast Hotel that day. Sergeant R. F. Leith said an identification parade was held and the girl immediately identified Palmer.