Dublin man who carried out 'grim catalogue' of abuse of his grandson and his three daughters gets 20 years

A Dublin man who repeatedly sexually assaulted his grandson for over a decade and similarly abused his three daughters when they were children has been jailed for 20 years.

Dublin man who carried out 'grim catalogue' of abuse of his grandson and his three daughters gets 20 years

A Dublin man who repeatedly sexually assaulted his grandson for over a decade and similarly abused his three daughters when they were children has been jailed for 20 years.

The man (aged 68), who cannot be named to protect the anonymity of his victims, was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury last August of indecently assaulting and raping his grandson from 2004 to 2015 when the boy was aged between four and 15 years old.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting three of his daughters, attempting to rape one of them and raping another on dates from 1981 to 1987 when the girls were between the ages of nine and 14.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said the man's abuse was “a grim catalogue” of serial abuse across two generations of his family.

He imposed a 20-year sentence with some consecutive elements, backdated to when the man went into custody last August after his trial.

Detective Garda Eoin Kennedy told Anne Rowland BL, prosecuting, that the man's grandson had reported the abuse in April 2015 to his school's guidance counsellor.

The boy lived with his mother, who was separated from his father, and would regularly stay in his grandfather's house where his father lived.

Beginning in 2004, when the boy was four years old, the man would insist on watching a film with the boy in the living room. The man would pretend to be asleep, force the boy to touch him and rape him.

The man twice raped the boy in his great-grandmother's empty house after they had visited her in a nursing home. The man would “whimper and cry” after the assaults, then act as if nothing had happened.

In his victim impact statement, the boy said he had extreme stress and anxiety due to the assaults, had missed school frequently and that his relationship with his father had suffered due to him having to avoid his grandfather.

The man was convicted last August after a nine-day trial. He later pleaded guilty to the sex attacks on his three daughters in the 1980s.

Each of the daughters described how the man would put their hands into his pocket, which had a hole in it so they could feel him. Mr Justice McCarthy described this element of the daughters' case as “exceptional squalidity”.

The accused also attempted to rape one of his daughters while their mother was away on holiday. During the same period he did rape another daughter.

Each daughter was abused over a period of several years. The man stopped assaulting his daughters at approximately the same time as when they reached puberty.

In her victim impact statement, the eldest daughter said she “had lived in fear” for more than 30 years. She said she had not told anyone about the assaults due to fearing she would break up her family, “but it was already broken”.

The youngest daughter said in her victim impact statement that the man stole her childhood.

“As far as I am concerned my dad is dead and has been for a long time.”

Anne-Marie Lawlor SC, defending, said the man had pleaded guilty to the assaults of his children at the earliest opportunity. She pointed out that the man had not given evidence in the trial involving his grandson.

She said he had not been otherwise violent in his dealings with his children and had not threatened them with violence. The man has no previous convictions.

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