In a packed courtroom it can be difficult to hear the subtleties of a witness’s account of proceedings but even with the constant rustling and coughing in Court 16 today the  story being told by Ronnie Dunbar’s youngest daughter were clear in all it’s confusing details.

On her second day giving evidence by video link the 17-year-old was adamant that both she and her older sister Samantha had seen their father kill Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon by strangling her.  Meticulously, her father’s defence counsel, Brendan Grehan SC, put before her all the conflicting details of her, and Samantha’s accounts of those events, pointing out to her that they didn’t just differ on minor details, there were large discrepancies as well.

The girl was defiant as Mr Grehan pointed out to her that she and Samantha couldn’t both be right when they gave different accounts of events that both said both were present for.  Again and again she would reply “that’s her statement not mine” and point out that “people perceive things differently”.  Then why, Mr Grehan asked, had Samantha said in her evidence that she did not hold one end of a tie that was around Melissa’s neck while her sister held the other end?  Samantha had also denied watching her father smother Melissa with a cushion.  Maybe she was out of the room, the girl insisted.  It happened.

We had been familiar with the fact that the girl had given gardai several conflicting accounts of the events of that day before giving a statement that was a good match for the account Samantha gave in July last year, after their father had been arrested and charged.  During her evidence, Samantha had dismissed the earlier accounts and reacted with blank incomprehension at some of the elements of the matching accounts where her and her sisters accounts differed.

Under cross examination today the girl was faced with each of these accounts which she dismissed in turn.  She had already said that she had lied, she explained.  She looked grave as she told Mr Grehan that she was “disgusted” with herself for lying but she had been afraid of her father and brainwashed by him, an accusation also made by her older sister in her evidence last week.  The girl said that her father had been in contact with her by phone after her sister had gone to the gardai and had threatened suicide if she had backed up her sister’s story.  She said he had told her he would hang himself and that her aunt, his sister, had told her he was threatening to kill himself “with a syringe and caustic soda”.

She said that Ronnie Dunbar had convinced himself of his innocence and had tried to convince her.  Many of the details she gave in her earlier false statements, she said, were fed to her by her father.  She said he would tell her a version of events as if it was true and in her confused and frightened state she had chosen to believe him even if she had known what he said to be wrong.

She agreed that she had told this false version of events to various people and had even spoken to a local radio presenter at Ocean FM, telling him that Samantha had killed Melissa in a row over drugs.  She told Mr Grehan that all this had been lies and that she had only told the truth in two statements once her father was safely in jail on remand.  One in July last year, the other virtually on the steps of the court, days after the trial had begun.

She agreed that she had read newspaper reports in the News of the World that gave Samantha’s account of Melissa’s death but said that this had not influenced her.  Reiterating her anti newspaer stance from the day before she said that since papers “mixed things up” and changed things she hadn’t given the account much thought.

We heard a section of the radio interview just after lunch.  The girl sounded young but spoke quickly and definitely in the few seconds we heard.  It was surprising to hear that she had been approached for an interview.  She couldn’t have been more than 14 or so at the time, rather young to become a target of the press even if she had given the interview willingly.  She insisted that she had not approached the radio station and there was much discussion as we headed off for lunch about the ethics of interviewing one so young about an ongoing criminal investigation.

As this week goes on the press aren’t coming out particularly well.