A man in his late forties has been jailed for 17.5 years for the rape and sexual assault of his four daughters who took to sleeping together in order to escape his advances.
A sitting of the Central Criminal Court in Cork heard that the man, who can’t be named to protect the identity of his victims, started sexually abusing his children in 2005. It continued for over 15 years until 2021 when the offences came to light and a garda investigation was started.
The court heard that Tusla had got involved in 2012 when his 14 year old daughter made a complaint. However, her father put her under duress to withdraw the complaint. She did so because she “didn’t want to cause trouble.” She also had heard her father tell her mother that the complaint would “finish” him and that he would be found “at the end of a rope.”
She was forced to apologise to her father for what was deemed a false accusation. When the apology was made the man turned to the mother of the child and said “I told you. I knew it.” The offending behaviour went on for another nine years.
Joy is a word Conor McGregor returns to again and again. Nikita Hand paints a much darker picture
Blindboy: ‘I left my first day of school feeling great shame. The pain of that still rises up in me’
Liverpool must think Mamardashvili is something very special if they believe he’s better than Kelleher
Election 2024 poll: Support for Independents jumps but Fine Gael remains most popular party
Ms Justice Karen O’Connor said that it was “disturbing” that the then teenage girl had been put under pressure to apologise to the person who was “breaching her trust” in the worst possible way.
She said the young women had said in their victim impact statements that their father, who was supposed to be their “protector” instead abused them when they were asleep in their bedrooms, at his workplace, and even at the home of their grandfather and great grandparents.
He gave them specific sexual instructions “sometimes two or three times a day” and spied on them through keyholes of bathrooms.
Ms Justice O’Connor said that the young girls were given “false promises” that the offending behaviour would come to an end but it happened on a “continuous basis.” He threatened the young girls in relation to the potential consequences of telling others what was going on in their home.
A garda investigation commenced in April of 2021 when a complaint was made to gardaí. The man denied all wrongdoing when he was arrested in January of 2022.
The man had been charged with 128 counts of sexual assault, attempted rape, rape and attempted sexual assault. He subsequently pleaded guilty to sample counts.
Ms Justice O’Connor described as an “aggravating factor” in the case the fact that the man was a in a “dominant position” with the children as a “person of authority.”
She said that a man who was supposed to love and protect his children instead subjected them to “degrading and humiliating” behaviour.
Ms Justice O’Connor said that one of the young women had referred to the family home as a “house of horrors.”
“This was a cold determined campaign of abuse. The family home should have felt safe. A child shouldn’t have to fear going to bed at night with footsteps creeping up.
“The siblings tried to protect each other only to realise in 2020 that he was abusing them all. They tried to avoid being alone with him by sleeping together.”
In mitigation she said that she had to take his guilty plea in to consideration.
She praised the four young women who had given victim impact statements saying that they were “extraordinarily courageous” and “remarkable.” She sentenced the man to 17.5 years in prison backdating the sentence to when he first entered custody last month.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis