A 21-year-old woman told the Central Criminal Court that her father had sexual intercourse with her almost on a daily basis between 1985 and 1987. She said the assaults happened when she came home from school each evening and occurred in her parents' bedroom, the kitchen and their sitting room while her mother was out working.
Her father once told her she would be a heartbreaker when she grew up, and she took this to mean she would be pretty. Her parents later separated and her mother remarried.
The woman told prosecuting counsel, Mr Patrick Gageby SC, her father would get her to take off her school uniform and have sex with her.
He would also on occasion make her perform oral sex on him and do the same on her.
After each session he would give her 30p to go to the shops and often warned her not to tell anyone or she would be taken away. She believed this.
The accused has pleaded not guilty to eight charges of rape, unlawful carnal knowledge, attempted unlawful carnal knowledge and indecent assaults on dates between September 1st, 1985, and September 21st, 1987.
The offences are alleged to have happened on a west Dublin estate. The jury of five women and seven men heard the woman, who cried throughout her evidence, relate how her father ran the house very strictly while her mother was the breadwinner.
The alleged victim said she told her mother in 1990, around the time of her Confirmation. Her mother dropped a cup of tea and ran out of the house to make a phone call to her present husband.
Cross-examined by defence counsel, Mr Blaise O'Carroll SC, she agreed the complaint arose in the context of her father coming back from England for her Confirmation. She had written to him hoping to get money and her mother was annoyed at her making contact with him. She made a statement to gardai on June 14th, 1990, and heard nothing more from them until 1996.
She agreed there was an incident in 1994 involving her brother and her mother after he had written to their father. Their mother was annoyed at him doing this without discussing it with her but she did not know if her mother made efforts at that time to reactivate the case.
She further agreed she initially only alleged to her mother that her father had been "touching" her and said nothing then about sexual intercourse or oral sex.
She did not tell the social worker about the oral sex either because she was embarrassed to talk about it. She was only 12 and did not know how to describe all that happened.
She also agreed with Mr O'Carroll that she made a complaint about her father touching her vagina in a double bed when he came home from England on a visit once and had asked her and her brother to stay over with him.
The alleged victim also agreed she had written previously to her father for money and got it because she liked to wear nice clothes and was envious of other children who had nice things.
The hearing continues before Mr Justice O'Sullivan.