Woman claims father sexually abused her for years
A woman has described how she was allegedly sexually abused as a young child by her father in their south Dublin city home.
She told the Central Criminal Court that the accused was often drunk and violent and would hit her mother and the children. She said he raped her twice and subjected her to four years of sexual abuse.
He has pleaded not guilty to unlawful carnal knowledge, buggery and 19 charges of indecently assault against one daughter and 25 counts of indecently assaulting another.
The now 43-year-old woman told prosecuting counsel, Mr Paul McDermott SC, that once after abusing her he said: “It's OK, lots of fathers do this with their daughters.”
She said while living with him she knew what he was doing was wrong but was more worried about him killing her mother.
“My father betrayed my trust sexually but at the end of it my mother couldn't get away from him, that's the tragedy,” she told the jury.
She described feeling trapped and terrified and wishing she could “just disappear”. She said she was very skinny as a child and wished she was fat to “protect” herself. She claimed her father would ask her to bring him a drink and would use this as an excuse to get her into his room and abuse her.
She said the first time he raped her at eight-years-old she got a feeling that it had happened before. She said during the rape she had a “terrible feeling of loneliness” and a “terrible pain”.
She said she was in fear of the accused and did not feel like she had a father. She said the family spent one Christmas Day in a garda station after he had got drunk and smashed up the house.
“I was afraid of my father but, as strange as it sounds, I actually loved him,” she said. “But I always knew he wasn't the same as other men.”
She said she once asked him why he did not treat her mother like a wife and he responded by slapping her across the face.
Defence counsel, Mr Blaise O'Carroll SC, asked her why she did not tell her mother of the abuse. She responded that her father had told her not to tell anyone. She said at one point she felt she did not really have a mother either because her mother ran off for several days and did not take her with her.
She agreed with Mr O'Carroll that she had let her father stay with her for several days while she studied in England but said she was “disgusted” when he greeted her by hugging her and saying “we shouldn't feel like this about each other”.
The trial continues before Mr Justice George Birmingham and a jury of six men and six women.
