Man given 12-year sentence for ‘appalling abuse’ of stepdaughter

A man who subjected his vulnerable stepdaughter to daily rape and sexual abuse and repeatedly forced her to video herself using a sex toy has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The Central Criminal Court heard that child’s mother walked in and caught the man during one oral rape. She told him that it should not happen again but the abuse continued.

The now 16-year-old girl and her siblings have been in State care since she told a classmate in the special school she attends about the abuse. She is now allowed supervised access only with her mother.

The 41-year-old man pleaded guilty to 12 charges of rape, 12 of oral rape, 11 charges of exploitation and six charges of production of pornography at their family home on dates between November 2015 and October 2018, when the girl was aged 11-14.

The pleas were accepted by the State on the grounds that they are sample counts representing 288 charges in total. The man, who is a foreign national, has no previous convictions and came to Ireland in 2010.

David Humphries BL, prosecuting, said the girl, who is now 16, is considered a “vulnerable child” and had been attending a local special-needs school. She is being cared for by a foster family.

Fear and threats

She told specialist Garda interviewers in February 2019 that the man made her have sex with him and take photos and videos of herself for him on her mobile phone while her mother was at work.

She said the man told her to “put my butt to the camera” and use a vibrator on herself. He would then download the videos and photos on to his laptop.

The girl said the man threatened to keep her out of school or take her mobile phone off her if she did not do as he ordered. He admitted to gardaí that he told the girl he would publish the photos online if she did not do as instructed.

A local detective garda said the man was arrested in June 2019 and admitted that there had been at least 70 incidents with his stepdaughter, outlining that he raped her at least 50 times and had at least 20 recordings of her.

He told gardaí “it felt bad but at the same time I felt good”. He said he had told her “This is our little secret” and accepted that she would have been afraid of him.

Later, the man told the gardaí he had abused the girl 120 times, or more. In one day, she had taken 50 photographs of herself with a selfie stick by his order. He claimed he never shared recordings or photographs.

He was given a 12-year sentence by Mr Justice Paul McDermott, with the final year suspended if he engages with the Probation Service and undergoes sexual offender’s treatment.

The judge also imposed a five-year post-release supervision order. The man is to have no contact with the victim or to have any unsupervised contact with any child.

Little protection

Describing the abuse as “appalling”, Mr Justice McDermott said the man’s “continual actions were a daily feature of the girl’s childhood” and her mother had offered the girl little protection.

The man’s guilty plea had saved the girl the ordeal of giving evidence, and he had assisted gardaí in retrieving deleted files from his laptop. He said he hoped that in time the man would gain “real insight into the damage he has done”.

The girl had been afraid to say anything because she didn’t want her family to break up. “You think that your parents are supposed to look after you. I called him ‘Dad’,” she said.

“I hope I can keep myself safe in my relationships in the future,” the girl continued. “I now know what safe feels like,” she added, referring to her foster family.

During questioning, the man “was very emotional at times and other times he put his hands over his ears because he couldn’t listen to what was being said”. The man accepted that he had ruined the girl’s life, the court was told.