A young woman wept in her husband's arms yesterday as her father was jailed for five years for sexually abusing her as a child. During the trial at Belfast Crown Court the woman, now 31, told the jury her father had raped and sexually abused her two or three times a week from the age of nine.
She said this had continued until 1982 when she left home at 16 to get married. The jury took 80 minutes to convict the 59-year-old man of seven specimen charges of rape and indecent assault.
The defendant, who cannot be named to protect his daughter's identity, denied the offences in the witness box, and said he could not explain why his daughter should make such allegations.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice McCollum said this had not been a matter of giving in to temptation once or twice. It was a systematic course of constant abuse of a young girl.
It is believed the woman in tends to make a new life for herself and her family in New Zealand.