A man facing prosecution on 38 charges of rape and indecent assault of his daughter when she was a young girl has secured a Supreme Court order preventing his trial.
The five-judge Supreme Court yesterday unanimously ruled that the combined effect of various matters, including the deaths of the man's wife and of a Danish man, had created a real risk that the man would not obtain a fair trial. It allowed his appeal against an earlier High Court refusal to stop the trial going ahead.
It was alleged that the offences took place at times when the man's daughter was aged between four and 13 between 1972 and 1981.
The girl was the third eldest of seven children, and she alleged it was an unhappy household with a number of incidents of violence perpetrated by her father against both the children and his wife.
She alleged the offences usually took place after a row between her parents when her father would sleep in bed with her.
The woman first made a complaint against her father in 1991 when she was in hospital suffering from manic depression. The complaint related to having been abused when she was 12 or 13 years of age.
She later told her consultant psychiatrist she was abused from the age of seven, and when in 1997 she made a formal complaint to gardaí she alleged she was abused from the age of four.
The woman also said she was very frightened of her father and that he was a violent man.
The father was not arrested and interviewed until February 1999.
Mr Justice Brian McCracken, giving the Supreme Court decision, said the woman clearly suffered from mental health problems and grew up in an atmosphere of family tension.
He was satisfied her delay in making the complaint was explicable and due to psychiatric problems and the dominant position of her father. The delay should not of itself justify an order prohibiting the trial.
However, he said the girl's mother died in 1995, and a Danish man who could also be called to give evidence was also dead. The woman had alleged she had offered to sleep with the Danish man when she was a young child in exchange for a rocking horse.
The woman had also refused to consent to the release of the clinical notes from the hospitals she had attended. There was also inconsistencies in the complaints as to when the alleged abuse began.
The judge said there was a combination of such circumstances in the case which would so inhibit the defence that there was a real risk the man might not be able to receive a fair trial.
He said while it might well be that none of these matters individually would justify prohibiting the trial, the court must view the matter with regard to the cumulative effect of these concerns.