A man convicted of sexually abusing two girls targeted them when they were being neglected by their mother and moved the family to Ireland to avoid detection, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
The 37-year-old was found guilty by a jury of three counts of rape and eight counts of sexually assaulting the girls at addresses in Dublin and Louth between December 3rd, 2010 and March 10th, 2011, when the girls were 10 and 12.
Following a 12-week trial, the jury took just three hours to return the unanimous verdicts last month.
The man, a UK national, fled to Chile in 2011 and was extradited from the US in 2014 after gardaí heard he was planning to fly to Florida for a business trip.
The older victim, now aged 19, said she was treated like “a princess by day and abused by night”. She is “profoundly angry” at her mother, who she believes knew exactly what was going on and was deliberately “pimping” out the girls in return for a carefree life.
At a sentence hearing on Monday, the court heard the girls were living with their mother and younger siblings in the UK. Their mother was “disinterested and unengaged” and neglected her children, Pauline Walley SC said.
Family friend
The man, a family friend, came into their lives in early 2010 and shortly afterwards, the family moved into his house nearby. He showered the children with gifts and holidays and the eldest girl was sent to a private school and took horse-riding lessons, Det Garda Michael Scanlon said.
UK social services had already been heavily involved with the family and continued to monitor the situation after the family moved to the man’s home. They became increasingly concerned that the man had daily control of the children and appeared to be involved in their “physical grooming”.
In November 2011, when UK social services ramped up their intervention with the family, they left the jurisdiction “under the control” of the man and moved to Co Louth, Det Garda Scanlon said.
The court heard the mother was often absent from the family home, travelling to the UK or other parts of Ireland. The man regularly sexually assaulted both girls in bed and this progressed to rape on a number of occasions.
Det Garda Scanlon said that in December 2010, the man and the older girl travelled to Dublin and got caught up in snowy weather. They ended up staying the night in a hotel and the man sexually assaulted and raped the girl in the room that night.
Later that night, when the girl was asleep, local gardaí called to the room to check up on her due to a notification in the system from UK social services.
They found nothing untoward, saw that the girl was asleep and left. Afterwards, the man woke the girl up and sexually assaulted her again.
Delay
There was a delay in communication between UK and Irish social services, with Irish social services getting involved with the family in January 2011. Teachers were concerned after seeing the man kissing the youngest girl on the lips a number of times.
In March 2011, the man told a social worker he was not in a relationship with the children’s mother, who was away at the time and social workers became “increasingly concerned” about her absences and the man’s control over the children.
Shortly afterwards, the alarm was raised when the man took the children out of the jurisdiction while their mother was in hospital, the court heard. The mother had previously refused to allow the children to be placed in voluntary care while she was in hospital and it later emerged that she told the man to take the children.
The children were returned to Ireland and placed immediately in foster care, where they have remained ever since. Their mother is facing prosecution in relation to her care of the children.
Shortly after entering care, the girls disclosed the abuse to their foster parents, who are extremely experienced and caring, the court heard.
After the man was extradited, he was released on bail for some time and lived in Dublin, where he did a studied at third-level. He has been in custody since the trial. He has no previous convictions.
His victims, now aged 17 and 19, read out victim impact statements in court. Both described how their family was divided and torn apart by the abuse, how their lives were upended and how they had to deal with the trauma of the abuse far away from their extended family and friends.
‘Saviour’
The younger girl said she thought the man was her “saviour” when he improved their lives so materially.
“Then I learned this was at a cost,” she said.
She said she used to consider throwing herself off a balcony to end things and has struggled with an eating disorder as a result of the abuse.
“I have lived with this for seven years,” she said. “I crave normality. I wish I had a normal life. I wish I had someone who loved me.”
The older girl said the man came into her life at a time when she was extremely vulnerable. She said she thought he was her “hero” and then could not believe what he did to her at night. She said she lived in denial for a long time.
“In my childish brain, I thought that if I didn’t think about the monster in the bed, then it couldn’t hurt me,” she said.
She said the 12-week trial was extremely traumatic.
“There was no chance of me ever coming out of this unscathed,” she said.
The matter will return to court on June 20th, when a plea of mitigation will be heard.