Abusive father jailed for eight years
A 63-year-old County Offaly man who raped one of his daughters and sexually abused another two has been jailed for eight years by the Central Criminal Court.
Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne sentenced him to eight years for seven counts of raping his second eldest daughter, and also imposed eight other sentences on him - ranging between 18 months and four years - for the remaining counts of sexual assault on her and his two other daughters.
All the sentences are to run concurrently with the eight-year sentence for rape. Ms Justice Dunne said she had structured the sentences in such a way that they need not be consecutive.
"He never showed any sign of remorse and offered no apology for the evil he inflicted on us - we find this unforgivable," the sisters said in a letter they handed to Ms Justice Dunne at the sentence hearing.
"Our age never mattered to him, nor did it matter to him that the most precious time of our lives, our chidhood, was taken from us so cruelly and is something that can never be returned to us," the sisters told Ms Justice Dunne in the letter.
Their father, a painter, was convicted unanimously by a jury on February 8 this year following almost seven hours deliberation spread over two days, with one night in a hotel, after five days of evidence.
In addition to finding him guilty of raping and sexually assaulting his second-eldest daughter, the jury also returned 16 guilty verdicts of indecent assault in relation to his now 36-year-old eldest daughter and one guilty verdict in relation to a third daughter.
He was found not guilty by the jury on five counts of indecent assault of his eldest daughter, two in relation to a third daughter and one in relation to a fourth daughter.
He pleaded guilty at the start of his trial to seven counts of indecent assault on two of his daughters during the same period. One of these guilty pleas was in relation to his eldest daughter and the remaining six to his second eldest daughter. The offences happened on dates from 1973 to 1987.
He told the jury during his trial that he became sexually attracted to his eldest daughter when she was 11 years old and explained that he came across the word 'paedophile' only in recent years. He said the term could be used to describe his attraction to his daughters "if that’s what you call it".
"I loved all my daughters," he said. He described his sexual abuse of them to gardaí as "fooling around" and denied having sexual intercourse with them. "I would never hurt them," he said.
In relation to the daughter the jury later convicted him of raping, he also said in evidence: "I never penetrated her, so I never hurt her. That’s the way I see it. I never made her cry." He said he had not been attracted to young girls in general, only his young daughters.
He said he could not explain what he called his "sexual drive" towards his daughters which, he said, started when the eldest girl was 11 years of age. He said it happened suddenly and went away just as suddenly when she was about 14 years of age.
In the letter his daughters handed to Ms Justice Dunne at the sentence hearing, they wrote: "We noted that our father’s only reply to all the terrible acts he did to us was that he was 63 years of age and he had not re-offended in 20 years...but the abuse never stopped in our heads."
"This has been our prison sentence, which has lasted our whole lives. Today our prison sentence is over and his begins."
Ms Justice Dunne, who had added the defendant to the Sexual Offendes Register following his conviction, also ordered two years of post-release supervision.
