Offaly man accused of sexually abusing daughters 'pretty much every day'
An Offaly man has gone on trial charged with the alleged systematic abuse of his own daughters and his partner’s daughters over the course of 17 years.
The 64-year-old has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to 100 charges of sex assault and rape of the four girls on dates between May 1989 and December 2006.
The eldest complainant, the man’s step-daughter, told the jury that her first memory of being abused by him was while she was wearing her communion dress waiting in the hallway to go to church.
Mr Condon told the jury that allegations in relation to the first and oldest complainant involve the sexual abuse and rape of her from the age of eight to 21 years old.
Her younger sister alleges she was sexually abused and raped from the time she was five years old until she turned 20 years old.
Their step-sisters, the man’s daughters, also allege that they were each sexually abused and raped from the ages of seven to 14 years old and from eight to 13 years old.
Mr Condon told the jury in opening the case that the accused man started a relationship with the first two complainants’ mother after their parent’s separated.
Counsel said the accused and this woman then went on to have children of their own.
Mr Condon told the jury it would hear evidence that this case involved the “systematic abuse” of the man’s partner’s two daughters and the couple’s eldest daughters, an abuse he said which involved an “astonishing degree of frequency”.
“The abuse happened pretty much every day,” Mr Condon said before he explained to the jury that 100 counts the man has denied are representative charges.
The eldest woman told Mr Condon that the abuse occurred on a daily basis and recounted incidents of the man molesting her while she prayed to god to let her die.
The now 31-year-old woman said that if she tried to stop the man she would get a box in the arm or a slap across the back of the head that would make her feel like her head was “going to explode”.
“It was either the physical or the sexual,” the woman told Mr Condon.
She said the abuse escalated to the man forcing her to perform a sex act on him.
She described incidents of waking up at night to find him engaged in a lewd act in front of her.
She told the jury he told her he would often come into her room at night.
The woman said the man would force her to watch pornographic movies by holding her head up with her hair but she would keep her eyes closed shut.
She said that when she got older and started to fight back the man would try and bribe her with a £1.
“I would still refuse. He would throw me out the front door and tell me ‘you are no good to me now’. He would leave me outside all day, in all kinds of weather,” the woman said.
She told the jury that she moved out of home and lived in Dublin for some time but had to return to Offaly when a relationship broke down because she had nowhere else to go.
She said the abuse started again and described incidents of the man “saying disgusting things to me and trying to grab me”.
She said he performed a sex act in front of her one day while she was sorting out clothes.
The abuse came to an end in December 2002 when she moved into her own home and warned the man never to touch her again.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of six men and six women.
Click to stay connected with
more stories like this:
more stories like this:
