A father who raped his teenage daughter throughout her pregnancy and while her two-week-old baby was in the same room has been jailed for 10 years.
Jennifer Berry (43) waived her right to anonymity so that Oliver Berry (61) could be named in any reporting of the case.
He was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury of 104 counts of both raping and sexually assaulting her between December 1982 and December 1994 when she was aged between seven and 19 years old.
Berry of Newtown Lawns, Mullingar, pleaded not guilty to all offences and was convicted following a trial earlier this year. He has two previous convictions for minor offences.
He still maintains his innocence and Ms Berry’s mother, who has since separated from her husband, supports him and gave evidence in his defence during the trial.
Ms Berry stated in her victim impact statement, read into the record by prosecutor Dominic McGinn SC, that the first time she was ever abused by her father he took something from her, “her innocence and childhood”.
Let down
She said she found it “unbearable” to hear her mother giving evidence on her father’s behalf during the trial.
“Instead of trying to protect me, she protected him. She turned her back on me. I can’t understand how she could do this. I don’t know what I did to deserve two parents like that.”
Ms Berry said she was let down in the worst way she could be and she now finds it hard to trust people. She said she was in fear of her father. He told her that if she disclosed the abuse her siblings would be taken away and this was a big concern for her.
She said she couldn’t concentrate well in school and she never went to college. She suffered panic attacks and depression from as far back as she could remember.
“I can’t say for definite but maybe it would have been different if I had been supported as a child,” Ms Berry continued.
She described the behaviour of her father as the “actions of a coward, evil”. She said he must be “in some parts a sick man because I can’t think of how he could hurt me otherwise”.
She referred to incidents of attempted suicide because of the abuse and said she thanked God that she is still alive.
“I have finally got justice after 35 years. I am now strong and able to fight. I am not weak anymore,” Ms Berry continued. She said that she hoped that she saved at least one person from going through what she did and reporting her father to the gardaí.
Mother’s underwear
Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy had adjourned the case having first heard the evidence two weeks ago.
She noted that Berry was 25 when he first abused his seven-year-old daughter and said on occasion he made her wear her mother’s underwear as “a prelude to rape”.
She said the first time he raped her, Jennifer did not understand what had happened by “virtue of her youth”.
Ms Justice Murphy said that a year when Berry was out of work, Jennifer was raped most days when she returned home from school for lunch. On occasion when she refused to go home she was beaten up by Berry on her ultimate return from school.
She noted that he continued to rape his daughter while she was pregnant with her first child as he told the victim “the damage had now been done”.
The judge said that Jennifer believed that Berry was her son’s father until DNA testing during the Garda investigation into the rapes confirmed her boyfriend at the time was the father.
Ms Justice Murphy said sexual abuse “ruptures wider family bonds” and added that Jennifer has “spent her entire life fighting demons. She has since learned that she has the strength and capacity to fight those demons”.
“He continually used her for his own sexual gratification and treated her as his property,” Ms Justice Murphy said before she jailed Berry for 10 years. She said she had noted the fact that he continues to protest his innocence and his indicated that he plans to appeal his convictions.
The judge said she had taken into consideration Berry’s age of state of his health when determining sentence.
Pornography
Garda Andrea Coonan told Mr McGinn that Ms Berry was first sexually assaulted by her father when he made her sit beside him while he watched pornography. The abuse continued on a regular basis in a similar way for about two years.
Ms Berry was nine years old when she was first raped by her father. She had just had a bath and had come into her bedroom wrapped in a towel when he told her “it was time” and he was “going to make her a woman”.
She struggled but he pushed her down and raped her. He gave her a tissue and told her to clean herself up and “stop acting like a baby”.
Gda Coonan said the abuse happened on a very frequent basis throughout Ms Berry’s childhood. She told gardaí he would take any opportunity to rape her, sometimes during her lunch break from school when she came home for food.
She was also raped in wasteland which he would drive her to. Berry would then rape her in the front of the car having pushed back the seat. Ms Berry recalled that such incidences occurred from the time she was in fourth class to when she was 16 years old.
Ms Berry became pregnant in April 1994 by a boyfriend she was seeing at the time. Her father continued to rape her through the pregnancy and raped her for the final time two weeks after she gave birth. Her baby son was in a basket in the room at the time.
Gda Coonan confirmed that this rape was so traumatic Ms Berry was determined that it would never happen again. She left the family home and never returned.
Fear
Ms Berry was in fear of her father. There was also an element of physical abuse, Gda Coonan said, and he had told his daughter that her siblings would be taken away if she told anyone what was happening.
Ms Berry told her mother at one point but Gda Coonan agreed with Mr McGinn that the woman was of “no assistance to her”.
In 2004, Berry began a new relationship and the woman had a young daughter. Ms Berry became concerned for the girl’s welfare and reported her father to the gardaí.
He was arrested in his home in January 2010 but denied the accusations. He suggested that Ms Berry and her mother had got together and made up the allegations.
John Peart SC, defending, said Berry worked in the Army, as a lorry driver and in construction. He has suffered from both diabetes and depression.
Counsel handed in a character reference from Berry’s current partner. He confirmed that his client doesn’t agree with the verdict of the jury.