THE HIGH Court has awarded more than €1 million in damages to three sisters who were “systematically and repeatedly sexually abused and raped” by their elder brother throughout their childhood.
The three had sued their brother, who was jailed for 10 years at the Central Criminal Court last year for sexually abusing them, for sexual assault and battery. The case was before the court for assessment of damages only as the sisters had secured judgment in their brother’s default of appearance.
The court heard the abuse began in the 1950s in and around the family home and ended in the late 1960s when they left home. The women are now aged in their early 60s and late 50s.
Mr Justice John Quirke yesterday praised the women’s “extraordinary courage” and said “no amount of money could compensate” them for their “lost childhoods” and the trauma they continued to suffer.
The judge said the three were subject to “brutal and depraved assaults” of a sexual nature leaving them psychologically damaged throughout their lives.
The abuse had started in the mid-1950s after their father left the family home never to return, he said. Their mother was “probably aware” of what their older brother was doing “but did nothing to intervene.” In measuring damages, the judge awarded each woman €350,000.
The court was told the sisters, particularly the two youngest, endured abuse on an almost daily basis at the hands of their brother. It was also stated the brother had abused the children of one of the sisters and also had shown inappropriate images to and tried to entice a child of another sister into a van.
Two of the sisters also alleged they were abused by other men, not before the courts.
Anthony Barr SC, for the women, said the abuse of the younger two started when they were seven and lasted until they were in their teens. The third sister could only remember being raped twice by her brother when she was in her teens.
One sister said she was abused from the age of seven and by the time she was 11 it had become part of her daily life. Her brother told her what he was doing was all right and “not to tell”. Her brother also regularly ordered her not to go to school but to report to a shed on the family farm where he abused her. As a result her education suffered greatly, she said. The abuse ended when she left the family home when she was 14.
Another sister said the abuse started shortly after she made her Communion and occurred when her mother was out shopping or when the family was at Mass. She estimated she was raped and assaulted four or five times a week.
At times she would be raped by her brother while a sister was keeping lookout. Other times, while her sister was being assaulted, she would be the lookout.
A psychiatrist, Dr Bernard Murphy, said all three women suffered from nightmares, insomnia and depression as a result of what happened to them. Through no fault of their own they also suffered from PTSD, guilt and low self-esteem due to the abuse, which was “horrific by anybody’s standards”.