A WOMAN told a jury yesterday in the Central Criminal Court that her father continuously raped and sexually abused her and her sister for 11 years and forced her into sexual behaviour with the family dog.
The 49-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to 51 charges of rape, unlawful carnal knowledge and indecent assault of his two daughters on unknown dates from January 1978 and December 1989.
The 29-year-old woman alleged that when she was aged about 10 he forced her to have sex with the dog, a terrier. On other occasions he gave her a choice between having sex with the dog or with him.
"I would say `daddy', as the dog was always killing rats. I didn't want to catch any diseases," the alleged victim, from the west of Ireland, told the court.
She said he took "every chance he got" to abuse her and one of her younger sisters. Her sister was forced to be present on two occasions when he abused her, the witness said.
Under cross-examination by Mr Patrick McCarthy SC (with Mr Bernard Madden BL), defending, the woman denied her claims were untrue. She agreed she had not made an official complaint until 1995 even though she had left the family home some years earlier and had got married.
She said she suspected her mother had known about the abuse and agreed she was not close to her.
The woman told Mr Michael Durack SC (with Ms Mary Ellen Ring, barrister), prosecuting, that she was now married and had two children.
Asked to recall her childhood, she said her parents and the family moved to a cottage in a rural area in the late 1970s. The cottage, owned by the accused's mother, was very basic, having no toilets or proper electrics.
She said her earliest memories were of her father always drinking, coming home drunk and beating her mother. He would also ask his own mother for her pension money to buy more drink. The witness said she did not think he had ever worked.
She claimed he started to abuse her when she was aged between nine and 10. "I knew it was wrong because it just didn't feel right. I said `you are my daddy and you should not be doing things like this to me'. I used to cover my eyes and he would tell me to stop crying," she said.
She told Mr Durack that her father raped and sexually abused her and her sister on a number of occasions in a bedroom, in a barn or behind a bush on a bog. "Anywhere he would get a chance he would take it," she said.
In 1985, when her mother was in hospital giving birth to one of her brothers, he again tried to have sex with her. She told him it was not right as his wife was giving birth to his son.
Describing how each alleged abuse session would end, the woman said: "He'd wander off to a different room and I'd just be left crying."
Opening the case, Mr Durack told the jury of nine men and three women that it would be shocked at some of the allegations made about "consistent and constant" abuse of the two daughters.
The trial continues.