Dublin sex abuse trial continues
A Dublin father accused of sexually abusing his children has said he believes the woman who fostered his son “planted” stories of abuse and neglect in the boy’s mind for “underlying reasons”.
The man (aged 73) told Ms Isobel Kennedy SC, prosecuting, under cross-examination, that the woman planted the allegations because he and his partner brought an assault case against her partner for allegedly biting their children while in foster care.
He explained that his partner brought the case privately into court without consulting the gardaí or the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).
He said he would be “happy” to have his partner’s solicitor give evidence about the case when Ms Kennedy put it to him that the DPP, which must approve every matter before it goes to court, had no record of the prosecution.
The man said he had documentation to prove the case went to court without DPP involvement.
The accused man has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to sexually assaulting and raping two daughters between the ages of four and 11 and sexually assaulting his son from the age of three to six at various locations from 1995 to 2002.
He told Ms Kennedy his son would have had “no memory” of any alleged sex abuse because he was so young when taken into care and that the details in his evidence had been “planted” by the foster mother.
He said he believed his partner convinced the elder daughter to make allegations against him and this girl subsequently encouraged her younger sister to make similar complaints.
He denied his house was untidy and filthy the day social workers came to take all his children away, and further denied that his son went to a foster home wearing girl’s clothes.
He said the social workers were wrong to say they couldn’t find clean clothes because there were “oceans of clean clothes” in the house.
He explained to Ms Kennedy that the house may have appeared messy when social workers got there because gardaí had been searching the rooms prior to their arrival and had “pulled sockets out of walls” and “spilt rat poison in the kitchen.”
When asked why one social worker had described finding dirty clothes in the hot press, the man replied that gardaí had “punched out the ceiling” sending down plaster.
He agreed when Ms Kennedy suggested that plaster would not have made the clothes dirty as it shakes off fabric.
The man denied he had sexual relations with his two daughters when they absconded from their residential care home.
He agreed he wrote a letter saying he molested his children which was subsequently sent to the Health Board but said this was a fabrication so they might return to their natural mother.
He further agreed he gave evidence about asking the elder girl to make sex abuse allegations against him and suggesting to her that if she did, she and her siblings would probably return home.
The man told Ms Kennedy that the girl had asked him if she should say he hit her but he replied that the allegations would “have to be about sex.”
He said the girl immediately refused to make the allegations at that time.
Ms Kennedy asked him if he had expected such a young girl to understand what he was asking of her and he replied: “Yes to a certain extent.”
The man continues his cross examination before Mr Justice George Birmingham and a jury of eight men and four women.
