A “monster” has been handed a prison sentence for the “appalling” rape of his eight-year-old cousin while he was babysitting in her home over 20 years ago.
The 38-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the now 29-year-old woman, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to four counts, including anal rape, oral rape and vaginal rape on dates between 2002 and 2003 in the child’s Dublin home.
The court heard the victim was eight years’ old at the time, while the man was 16.
Imposing sentence on Thursday, Mr Justice Paul McDermott said the man committed “appalling” and repeated sexual offences against his young cousin. He also noted there was an “element of grooming” as the then-teenager told the girl to keep the offending a secret.
Mr Justice McDermott said the man had been considered “worthy enough” to babysit, but had betrayed the level of trust placed in him through his behaviour.
Culpability
The judge said the court took into account that the man was a teenager at the time, but was “approaching adulthood” and it was considered that he had a high level of culpability for his actions.
He said he would have imposed a headline sentence of 13 years on an adult, but reduced this to nine years as the man was a teenager at the time. He said it was the court's view that the man would have received a custodial sentence if he had been sentenced while a teenager.
The judge said the mitigating features include the man's guilty plea, his expressions of remorse and the contents of a number of reports.
Mr Justice McDermott imposed a sentence of seven years and six months, with the final 18 months suspended under strict conditions. These include that the man place himself under the supervision of the Probation Services post-release and have no unsupervised contact with children.
A local sergeant told Ronan Kennedy SC that the woman made a statement of complaint in February 2020. She said the first incident occurred when her cousin lifted her from her bed where she had been sleeping and told her that she could get up and watch television.
They went into the sitting room and the teenager pushed the armchair up against the door, blocking it. He covered the girl’s face and nose with a tea towel and pushed her face down into the chair and anally raped her.
She told the gardaí that she was crying and trying to scream, but her mouth was covered. She said her cousin later carried her back to her bed and told her: “This is our little secret.”
The woman also described another incident when her cousin tried to perform oral sex on her and another occasion when he made her perform oral sex on him.
She recalled locking her bedroom door and the balcony window at her bedroom and said her cousin knocked on the window to try and get in, but she refused.
She said on another occasion, she was sleeping beside her brother because she said she “would be safe there”, but her cousin lifted her out of her bed.
The woman said the anal rapes felt what she imagined it would feel like to be stabbed.
She said she began to stay with a friend of her mother’s to prevent her cousin from raping her. She also said her mother’s friend moved in with them and there was no need for her cousin to babysit anymore.
The woman told gardaí she began drinking and taking drugs and from the age of 13, she was staying out all night. She began to get into trouble with gardaí and was physical towards her mother. She later ended up homeless and in emergency care.
Statements
The garda confirmed that the woman disclosed the abuse to an older sister as a younger teenager and the allegations were investigated by gardaí, but when she was 14-year-old she made a statement to gardaí that she did not wish to make a formal complaint. She had previously made “limited disclosures”.
The Sgt agreed with Mr Kennedy that the girl appeared to be under the influence of her mother when she said she didn’t want to take the matter any further. She later made the statement in June 2020. The man was interviewed, on a voluntary basis, but counsel said “nothing came out of the interview".
The woman read her victim impact statement into the record. She said she was before the court as a a 29-year-old as a testament to herself, “to articulate the trauma and suffering of a young girl”.
She said she may appear grounded and well put-together but this was not the case. She said the abuse she suffered at the hands of her cousin took her “innocence, purity and part of my soul”.
'Monster'
She described her cousin as a “monster” and a “predator” who inflicted pain and shattered her mental health into “smithereens”. She said she was left an emotionally and physically scared little girl and said the following two decades “were as traumatic as the abuse itself”. She said she “lost her faith in humanity, before I ever knew what humanity was”.
“I had not even begun to experience life and what it could have been,” the woman continued before she said as a result of her cousin’s “abusive actions” she began to smoke, drink and take drugs before she even became a teenager.
She described herself as “screaming on the inside” and feeling alone in the world. “I could not speak the words of what you had done without having panic attacks,” the woman said before she added that she was homeless at 15. She said her “inner self was being tortured” and she hated everyone around her and hated herself. She said abusive relationships she began “stemmed from the abuse you inflicted on me”.
The woman said in her early to mid-20s, she was dying on the inside and “my soul being chipped away by the inhumane actions of you”.
She said she later tried to seek out why she had been abused, but she said she can never understand why someone would consciously sexually assault someone. She said she decided to disclose the abuse as she felt it was “my duty to protect any other child from potential abuse”.
“This will stay with me for a lifetime, as vivid as it was for the last two decades. I give you back all the pain, suffering and trauma you gave me. This is not our little secret anymore,” the woman concluded.
Mr Kennedy said the Director of Public Prosecutions has said had the accused been an adult at the time of offending, the abuse would have fitted into the more serious category warranting a headline sentence of 10 to 15 years because of the “grave abuse of trust, age disparity, the level of degradation and the impact the abuse had on her”.
The man has two previous convictions, including one for possession of drugs for sale or supply for which he served a custodial sentence.
Padraig Dwyer SC, defending, said his client wished to express remorse and apology to the victim.
He said a probation report concluded that he was at low risk of reoffending.
A psychiatric report was also handed to the court.
On Thursday, Mr Justice McDermott also directed that the man's sentence is to be backdated to October 17th when he entered custody. He further ordered the man to have no contact with the victim.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call the national 24-hour Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800-77 8888, access text service and webchat options at drcc.ie/services/helpline/ or visit Rape Crisis Help.
