A father who was jailed for 14 years for the repeated rape of his nine-year-old daughter has failed in an appeal against his conviction.
The Court of Appeal ruled there was no basis to the man’s claim of possible collusion between the complainant and other witnesses.
At the Court of Appeal on Thursday, Mr Justice John Edwards rejected the appeal by the 59-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his daughter.
“Whether the complainant’s evidence was consistent or inconsistent with what she said to those to whom she had complained was uniquely a jury issue,” he said.
Following a Central Criminal Court trial in November 2022, a jury convicted the man of 11 offences, including rape, oral rape, sexual assault, false imprisonment, threatening to kill, and forcing a child to watch sexual activity.
The abuse took place in the family home in the Midlands between December 2019 and April 2020, Lorcan Staines SC, prosecuting, told the court.
The court heard the family was very religious, and the man told his daughter that the bible says a child must do what their father says. He also threatened to kill her and her other family members if she told anyone about the abuse, while showing her a knife.
The man “vehemently” denied the claims and continues to deny any wrong-doing, the court heard. He told gardaí that the child's mother, from whom he is estranged, made up the claims to turn his children against him.
The man subsequently appealed his conviction in May last, when defence counsel Garnet Orange SC argued that the trial judge erred in refusing to stop the trial at the conclusion of the prosecution case and failed to direct immediate disclosure of WhatsApp or Viber communications between members of the family – excluding the accused – when the existence of the same emerged in the course of the prosecution evidence.
He also submitted that the judge erred in refusing to allow cross-examination regarding the results of a physical examination of the complainant and in refusing to give a corroboration warning. Such a warning can be given by a judge to a jury to highlight the dangers of convicting a defendant on the basis of uncorroborated evidence.
In delivering the Court of Appeal’s judgement today, Mr Justice Edwards said he was not persuaded that the trial judge erred in refusing to withdraw the case from the jury.
He said that all of the witnesses were available to the defence to be cross-examined, but it was entirely speculative as to whether material communications might have been contained in any record of WhatsApp messages exchanged between them.
He went on to say that the court was completely satisfied that any delays in the injured party making a complaint to the gardaí were not of such import as to require that the case be withdrawn from the jury.
