A JURY at the Central Criminal Court has found a father of five guilty of the wilful neglect of three of his children and of physically assaulting two of his sons.
The jury will return this morning to continue its deliberations on five other charges against the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The jury began deliberating on 10 counts of rape, sexual assault, wilful neglect and wilful assault, on Friday afternoon.
Before the jurors retired to consider their verdict, Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne directed them to return a verdict of not guilty on a charge of the sexual assault of his now 13-year-old son.
She said there was “simply no evidence of any kind to support that charge”.
The accused man had pleaded not guilty to the rape and sexual assault of his now 10-year-old daughter in September 2007.
He also pleaded not guilty of the sexual assault of his now 13-year- old son between January and February 2007.
He pleaded not guilty to the wilful assault of his three sons in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering, injury to the children’s health or seriously affect their wellbeing between January and September 2007.
He further denied the wilful neglect of all five children, now aged between seven and 14 years old, by failing to provide adequate clothing or food.
The jurors spent about 90 minutes deliberating on Friday afternoon and were sent home for the weekend after they had failed to reach a verdict.
They resumed their deliberations yesterday morning.
They returned just after 2pm to say that they found the 42-year-old man guilty of the wilful assault of his eldest two sons when the boys were aged 10 and 11.
Two hours later, Ms Justice Dunne told the jury she would accept a majority verdict of 11-1 or 10-2 on the remaining charges.
The jury returned just before 5.30pm to say it had reached a majority verdict of 10-2 on three other charges.
It found the accused guilty of the wilful neglect of his two daughters and a son, by failing to provide adequate clothing or food in the family home.
The girls were then aged eight and four, while the boy was aged 11.
All five children gave evidence via video-link during the trial, as did the accused man and some of the children’s foster parents.
