Jailed sex offender sentenced for raping victim's younger sister

The Central Criminal Court heard that the now 39-year-old victim was a vulnerable woman who was brought up in an extremely dysfunctional family and abused by four men.

She was abused by her uncle and grandfather. Her father has also been convicted of raping her and he got her pregnant as a young girl. She gave that baby up for adoption when the boy was four years old, which still causes her huge distress.

The 61-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, pleaded guilty to one charge of rape at the victim's family home in Co. Galway on an unknown date sometime in 1989 and 1991.

Mr Justice Michael White sentenced the man to eight years imprisonment and backdated the sentence to March 28, 2017, the date the man was arrested in prison for this charge.

A local Detective Garda told Karl Finnegan BL, prosecuting, that social workers had been involved with the victim's family from when she was young. He said there were issues of “neglect and abuse”, her mother was an alcoholic and the children in the family had a number of different fathers.

The man moved in with the family in 1988 and was in a relationship with her mother for eight years.

She said he raped her in her bedroom when she was either 10 or 12 years old. She felt him very heavy on top of her and described it as “hurting her so much”. She realised she was bleeding shortly afterwards and told her mother. Her mother checked her out and later brought her to a doctor.

The woman told the gardaí that the doctor asked her if she had a boyfriend and she confirmed that she did not. The doctor spoke to her mother, they went back home and the man did not abuse her again.

The man was arrested in prison in March 2017 and made full admissions.

The detective confirmed that the woman, who is now living in England, felt she was not strong enough to come to court or make a victim impact statement.

She said she got the courage to make a statement to gardaí in August 2015 following the man's conviction earlier that year for raping her older sister.

In 2015 he was sentenced to 12 years in prison with the final two years suspended after he pleaded guilty to raping the woman's older sister between November 1988 and December 1992 when she was aged between 11 and 15 years old.

The detective told Mr Finnegan that the woman in this case was “sick to her stomach and always blamed herself and thought it was her fault”.

She still suffers from severe depression and anxiety and is on medication to help her manage this.

The detective agreed with Kieran Kelly BL, defending, that his client is originally from Dublin and from a large family. He accepted that the victim and her sisters regularly were left hungry and his client often provided food for them.

A psychological report concluded that the man was below average intelligence and emotionally detached.

Mr Justice White said the victim in this case was “a woman of some courage” and said that there had been a serious breach of trust by the man. He said the mitigating factors in the case were the man's guilty plea, his age and his “genuine remorse”.