A “monster” who raped his daughter and threatened to kill her and move on to abusing her younger sister if she told anyone has been jailed for 12 years.
The 51-year-old Co Offaly man physically and sexually abused his daughter while she was visiting him at his various homes from when she was a small child, the Central Criminal Court heard.
He was found guilty following a trial last July of five sample counts comprising rape and oral rape on dates between 2012 and 2020. The girl was aged from about five to 13 years at the time of the offending and the counts on the indictment were representative of particular incidents she remembered.
The court heard the girl’s mother and father split up when she and her younger sister were small. Their mother wanted the girls to have a relationship with their father and they visited him at weekends, the court heard.
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The court heard the man would get drunk and lie on the couch during the visits. During the first offence, the man hit his daughter and told her she was “just like her mother” before orally and vaginally raping her. He repeatedly slapped her face during the attack, the court heard.
This kind of abuse occurred on several more occasions.
When the girl said she would tell her mother, the man told her he would “do it to her sister and kill her [the girl] and her family”, the court heard.
He then forcibly took the girl’s clothes off and raped her, telling her again that she was just like her mother. This attack occurred in a shed at his home.
The girl’s last distinct memory of the abuse was some years later in another shed at the home the accused shared with his partner. He orally raped and then raped his daughter, who estimated that this type of abuse occurred about eight or nine times at this location.
Her younger sister said in evidence that she witnessed her sister being orally raped by their father when she peeped into the shed on one occasion.
The girl confided in a friend about the abuse and she eventually told her mother what her father was doing to her.
The man was arrested and interviewed by gardaí in 2023 and maintained that nothing had happened. He gave evidence at trial and denied any wrongdoing. His partner also gave evidence on his behalf.
In her victim-impact statement, the complainant, who is now 19, said the majority of her life has been taken up by abuse and she had her first suicidal thought at the age of seven.
“I didn’t want to live with the pain he was causing me, it always felt wrong,” she said. “I was protecting my sister from being abused, my mam from being hurt. My family was all I cared about.”
She said her father’s threat to move on to abuse her little sister still haunts her.
“When the man who’s supposed to treat you the best in your life turns out to be a monster, how can you trust other men?” she asked.
She said her family live with the shame and guilt of not knowing what was happening to her.
“I know I am a kind and loving person despite what my father did to me and that’s something he will never take from me,” she said in the statement.
Sentencing the man on Friday, Mr Justice Paul McDermott noted he had been placed by the Probation Service at a moderate risk of reoffending. He set a headline sentence of 13 years, which he reduced to 12 years.
When considering suspending part of this sentence, he noted the man has not acknowledged any wrongdoing and was therefore not suitable.
Conor Devally SC, defending, handed in a number of testimonials in support of the man from family members including his sister, his partner and his mother.
