October 2013
Pervert cornered schoolgirl in shop
A schoolgirl was “freaked out” by a pervert who cornered her in a Carlisle shop, a court heard.
David Delahunty, who had previously been banned from even speaking to any lone females after making offensive sexual comments to two women at a city bus stop, approached the 14-year-old in the Home Bargains store near the bus station.
Concerned staff watched as the 57-year-old tried to talk to her and one – to whom he had already made a suggestive comment as he entered the shop – even went closer to keep an eye on him, prosecutor Gerard Rogerson told Carlisle Crown Court.
At first the girl tried to ignore him, then she moved away from him, but for 15 minutes he kept “moving closer and closer”.
Delahunty, of Grasmere Street, Currock, eventually left after one of the staff told him to leave the girl alone.
But he was arrested soon afterwards after police realised he had previously been in trouble for making lewd suggestions to two women waiting for a bus in West Tower Street and claiming, falsely, that he had just been released from Durham Prison where he had been serving a sentence for rape.
As a result of that incident a judge in January banned Delahunty from speaking to any lone women.
But he was back in court yesterday for breaching that Sexual Offences Prevention Order by talking to the schoolgirl in the shop.
Mr Rogerson said the girl had been “shaken but not distressed”, though she had been “freaked out” by it.
He said she had told the police after the incident: “I wasn’t scared. I just thought he was weird.”
Delahunty later told the police he found it hard to obey the court order because he was “naturally talkative”.
Asked why he did it, he replied: “I don’t have any reason except being friendly.”
Delahunty pleaded guilty to breaching the court order and was put under a curfew from 6pm to 6am for the next six months.
The nine-month suspended prison sentence, imposed on him in January, will continue.
His barrister Sara Davie said he had been “drinking since he was 10”, so alcohol was at the root of all his problems.
February 2013
A man who made sexually offensive remarks to two women at a bus stop has been banned from approaching any lone women on the street for 10 years.
The unusual order was passed on 56-year-old David Delahunty at Carlisle Crown Court as part of his punishment for kissing a woman on the cheek after making insulting sexual suggestions to her at a bus stop.
Judge Paul Batty QC described the incident as “an absolutely disgraceful episode”.
Now Delahunty, of Grasmere Street, Currock, Carlisle, could be arrested even if he merely says hello in any public place to any woman he does not know.
The court order – imposed after Delahunty pleaded guilty to a charge of sexual assault – bans him for the next 10 years from approaching or speaking to “any lone female not known to him in a public place” except in an emergency.
Prosecutor Becky McGregor told the court the woman, who was in her 20s, was waiting for a bus in West Tower Street on the afternoon of Monday November 26 last year when Delahunty came up and told her she was “a bonny lass”. He asked her where she came from and, when she said Durham, he told her that’s where he had just come from too – claiming, falsely, that he had just been released from Durham Prison where he had been serving a sentence for rape.
He then made a series of offensive lewd comments, which the woman escaped only by getting on a bus. But as she climbed aboard, the court heard, he kissed her on the cheek, leaving her “disgusted and frightened”.
The woman was so traumatised she is now scared to go into Carlisle for fear that she might meet Delahunty again.
The court heard Delahunty had no conviction for rape, though he had been convicted of pestering young children and last year had been investigated for allegedly making sexual comments to two young girls on the street.
Mitigating, defence barrister Keith Thomas said Delahunty “had been drinking a lot”.
He said his client was so drunk he had initially denied the woman’s allegations.
He accepted what he had done only when his own daughter told him that no woman would make up such a story.
Mr Thomas said Delahunty had grown up in a big family in Liverpool where such “banter” was commonplace.
“But he realises that can’t happen here,” he added. “He realises this sort of inappropriate familiarity has to cease and that he should not talk to any woman he does not know.”
Judge Batty imposed a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, ordered him to do 120 hours unpaid community work and put him on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.
Delahunty was also put under probation supervision for a year and will be made to undergo treatment for his binge drinking.
