A Cork woman has said that she was sexually assaulted in her own bedroom over the weekend by an intruder.
Linda Hegarty spoke to Neil Prendeville on RedFM and detailed how she was awoken in the early hours of Sunday morning at her home in Gurranabraher in Cork by a man with his hand under her clothing.
Hegarty, who was asleep in her room along with her young son, said the man gained entry through a window in her daughter’s bedroom. Thankfully, Hegarty said her teenage daughter was away at the time.
“I sat up in the bed and I looked over,” Hegarty said.
“There was a man leaning over my son – a very tall, stocky man – so I pushed my son over to me and I was uncontrollably screaming telling him to leave, what did he want and he then got up and tried to get back out through my daughter’s bedroom but then he went down the stairs.
“I screamed, he ran away, I started screaming for my son, who is 16, he came in. My other son woke up and then my daughter. I was shaking, I was so shocked,” said Linda.
“They were so frightened, they were shaking, we were all shaking, [my son] came in and consoled me. We didn’t know what to do we were so frightened. So we took a breath and went downstairs and he closed the front door. He dialled the Gurranabraher Garda Station and they came down.”
A Garda Síochána confirmed to JOE that they’re investigating an alleged sexual assault that is reported to have occurred at a house in the Gurranabraher area of Cork in the early hours of Sunday morning.
They said investigations into the incident are ongoing.
Hegarty believes that man was between 19 and 25 years of age and said there was a strong smell of alcohol in the room.
“He had really black hair, really skin-tight at the back, the way boys have it these days, he had a very strong smell of alcohol off him, I remember the black runners and socks,” she said.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
