A MAN has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for the daily sexual abuse of his daughter from the age of nine for four years.
The now 18-year-old woman addressed the sentence hearing last Monday, through her victim impact statement, in which she spoke of her hatred for her father and described him as a monster.
“I don’t want an apology from him. I wanted him named and shamed but I can’t do that because it would hurt my family,” the woman said.
The 71-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury in March on 60 counts of sexual abuse and 14 charges of rape between January 2002 and September 2006 in Galway and Roscommon. He had pleaded not guilty.
Mr Justice Paul Carney suspended the last three years of the sentence after saying that he did not think it was right that someone should die in prison. He had also taken into account that the man had reached “advanced years” without criminal conviction and had otherwise devoted his life to “hard work and sporting activities”.
Mr Justice Carney declared the man a sex offender. He said he could not be penalised “for putting his daughter on proof of the outrages perpetrated against her” but by doing so he had lost his right to “the most fruitful mitigation, a plea of guilty”.
He also said he had not expressed “genuine remorse” and he had been “smart-alecky” during his Garda interviews, saying 46 times, “if [victim] says so, yes it is true”.
Mr Justice Carney noted that the man later told the jury that he had used a similar sentiment in his coaching days “to humour footballers in the dressing room”.
He had taken into account the following when concluding that the offence merited a 15-year sentence for the rapes and 10 year concurrent terms for the sex assaults.
“The aggravating factors include the breach of trust, the fact the offence occurred within her home where she was entitled to security and sanctuary, the effect it had on her, her age at the time, the frequency and period of time the offence spanned, his absence of remorse and the predatory nature of the offence.”
He had also taken into consideration that the man had tried to jeopardise the trial by communicating with the victim and her mother in the days before it and thereby breaching his bail conditions. He suspended the final three years on condition that the man keeps away from his daughter on his release from prison.
The teenager stated in her victim impact statement that her father had put her through the trauma of two trials, after the jury failed to agree on a verdict in an earlier hearing, and he had never shown remorse.
“He waited until the foreman said guilty 74 times before he said sorry,” the teenager said, referring to the man apologising to her and her mother as he was being led away by prison officers following the verdict at the second trial.
She said he had left her siblings without a father and herself without an education “and to pick up the pieces”. She had “a monster for a father”, adding that she never wanted to see or hear from him again.
She said she was “free for the first time” after her father left the family home when she told her mother about the abuse.