A YOUNG woman who was sexually abused by her father for four years, starting in 1999 when she was aged nine, has welcomed her father's 13-year jail sentence.
Michael Christopher Bradley, (44), a farmer from Corick Road in Draperstown, Co Derry, was convicted last month of 24 charges of sexually abusing his daughter. He still maintains his innocence.
During sentencing at the crown court in Derry yesterday, Ciara Bradley (18) asked Judge Patrick Lynch to remove publicity orders which had kept her father's name and her name out of the public domain during the trial, which was held in a closed courtroom for two weeks.
Prosecution barrister Ken McMahon QC told Judge Lynch that Ms Bradley felt "she was being gagged by the law" and "not being allowed to speak out makes her feel guilty. She also feels the naming of the accused could protect other."
He said she was being supported in her decision "after very lengthy consideration by her mother".
Granting the application, Judge Lynch described Ms Bradley as "an intelligent young woman who has thought the matter through very carefully and, if it is of assistance to her to come to terms with what has happened by speaking about it openly, then I formally lift the orders".
In a statement read by her aunt Rosie Armour, Ms Bradley said she was glad the case was now over and that justice had been done.
"My father sexually abused me in the most horrible way for four years of my childhood. My father should have admitted his guilt but chose to plead not guilty, thereby making me relive the abuse in intimate detail, forcing me to describe my ordeal to a courtroom full of strangers.
"I want to thank my family, the police, the prosecution service and the NSPCC [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] for their help and support throughout the trial.
"Michael Bradley is now serving a lengthy prison sentence which he has brought on himself and he cannot subject any other children to what he put me through," she added.
Sentencing Bradley, Judge Lynch also put him on the sex offenders register for an indeterminate period and banned him from any unsupervised access to children under 18 years.
"I need hardly emphasise the gravity of the offences of which you have been convicted. There can be fewer more gross abuses of trust than that of a father abusing a daughter.
"A father is the very person a young child should be looking to, a father and a mother, for succour, assistance and protection.
"In your case your daughter required protection from you. You grossly abused your daughter to sustain your own sexual requirements starting when she was aged nine", he said.
Judge Lynch said Ms Bradley turned to alcohol to "blot out the physical and mental pain" caused by her father's abuse and that he had deprived her of a natural childhood.