A man has been jailed for 15 years for carrying out a sustained campaign of sexual abuse against his daughter.
The Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork heard Edward Molyneaux, now aged 82, raped Marie Murphy on a weekly basis for eight years from when she was 12 and that she came to think it was the “norm”.
Molyneaux, of Kilshenane, Listowel, Co Kerry, was convicted by a jury of 61 counts of rape, three counts of indecent assault and two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on Ms Murphy, now aged 59, between 1979 and 1987.
In her victim impact statement, Ms Murphy, who waived her right to anonymity so her father could be named, said “it’s time to speak out”.
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“I’m not keeping your secret any more, it’s your shame, your blame, you’re the one who destroyed your name and your family,” she said.
Ms Murphy said her father made her feel different from the rest of the family, portraying her as a troublemaker and a liar.
“You treated me as your sexual plaything, doing things that a child should never know. You robbed me of the innocence of childhood.”
She said others saw Molyneaux as “a charismatic rogue that would help anyone out” but he was in fact “a master manipulator”.
“No one saw the wreckage you were causing within the home and in my life,” she added.
Ms Justice Siobhán Lankford recalled the evidence of Det Sgt Trevor Ryan, who told the court Molyneaux raped his daughter in the family home, adjacent fields, ditches, lanes and a shed.
She noted that the indecent assaults consisted of particularly degrading abuse and the physical assaults related to beating his daughter with a strap in 1981 and breaking a chair against her head in 1982.
Ray Boland SC, prosecuting, had told the court the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) believed the offending was “exceptional” and merited a sentence of 15 years to life due to the duration of the offending and the breach of trust and degradation involved.
Barry White SC, for Molyneaux, said he would not dispute the DPP’s view that the offending merited a long sentence if his client was in his 50s. However, he said the defendant was 82 and imposing a lengthy sentence would mean he would die in jail which was neither morally nor legally right.
Ms Justice Lankford said she would take Mr White’s comments into account, but she agreed with the DPP’s assessment that the offending was at the upper end of the scale.
She said while Molyneaux could not be penalised for contesting the case, the fact he put Ms Murphy through the trauma of having to testify, even after he admitted to the offending at interview, meant he could not expect to benefit from the discount he would have got for a guilty plea.
Ms Justice Lankford fixed a headline sentence of 17½ years but reduced it to 15 years because of Molyneaux’s age and health, his lack of previous convictions and the fact he had not come to the attention of gardaí since this offending.
She said Molyneux had not accepted the verdict of the jury, nor shown any remorse, so there was no prospect of rehabilitation and no basis for suspending any part of the term. She also ordered that he be placed on the sex offenders register for life.
