Man pleads not guilty to rape of daughter

A 49-YEAR-OLD man has gone on trial in the Central Criminal Court, charged with rape and assault of his daughter on multiple occasions.

The man has pleaded not guilty to 105 charges – 81 of rape, 12 of buggery and 12 of indecent assault – over 15 years between 1985 and 2000.

Before the trial began, Mr Justice Barry White directed that the media should take care not to publish or broadcast anything that might lead to identification of the family involved.

He requested that reportage should be such that it would be impossible to pinpoint this particular family or give a general location as to where the events concerned might have happened.

The accused’s daughter, now aged 30, told the court that the abuse began when she was five or six years old. Recalling that first instance of rape, she said her father brought her into a cupboard.

“He said to me, ‘it’s just a game’ and we couldn’t tell my mother about it,” she said. “I tried screaming, crying, asking him to stop. It lasted a few minutes.”

Outlining how the abuse continued through her childhood, often daily or at least weekly, she said her father would direct her to masturbate him and to have oral sex with him.

“Whenever he wanted to have sex with me, he’d show me his private parts, to touch him, and all that,” she said.

“I didn’t want to.”

The instances occurred at home, outside on the ground, over a car bonnet and inside the vehicle, she said. Her father was away from home for about two years when she was nine and this gave her some respite.

However, she said he resumed his abuse of her on his return home and it was often more violent in nature.

“He told me not to say anything or he’d hit me”, the woman said.

“It continued every chance he got. When my mother was not there, or asleep, he’d have his chance.”

The witness said she was too afraid to tell anyone what was happening and she believed that her sister was the only person in whom she could confide.

When she was in her late teens she had a boyfriend, she became pregnant and gave birth.

She described how she returned to her parents’ home after the birth and her father raped her within a fortnight, even though she had stitches from the delivery of her child.

She said her father continued to have sex with her until she went to a Garda station in 2000 and reported what was happening to her.

Her father had raped her several times during that particular week, she added.

A Garda sergeant took her to hospital where she was examined and a number of samples and swabs were taken.

The case continues today.