A ‘fundamental breach of trust’: Man jailed for sexually abusing step daughter

A Dublin woman who was sexually abused by her step-father 10 times when she was a child in the 1990s has told a court that her “innocence was stolen by the man she believed to be her father”.

Noel Foran (60), of Birchview Close, Kilnamanagh, Tallaght, has been jailed for three years after he pleaded guilty to three sample counts of sexually assaulting Irene Cullen at that address on dates between March 14th, 1991 and March 13th, 1998.

Ms Cullen, now aged 38, waived her anonymity following the sentencing at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in order to name Foran.

The court heard Ms Cullen only remembered one specific incident of abuse on New Year’s Eve when she was aged 11. However, Foran told counsellors he had sexually assaulted his step-daughter around 10 times, mostly while the child was asleep, when she was aged between six and 13.

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At a hearing last week, Ms Cullen read her victim impact statement aloud and said it was impossible to summarise the life changing effects that the abuse continues to have on her. She said she has been diagnosed with PTSD and other psychiatric disorders as a direct result of the trauma she suffered.

Ms Cullen self-harmed as a teenager and was prescribed anti-depressants and sleeping tablets at the age of 16, the court heard. “To this day my sleep is profoundly affected with night terrors, flashbacks, frequent waking and nightmares,” she said.

‘Difficult road’

Ms Cullen said that she has had to spend more than 500 days in St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin since she first made her statement to gardaí in 2017.

“I now face the difficult road of trying to repair the unmeasurable damage to the broken child inside me,” she said.

Passing sentence on Thursday, Judge Orla Crowe praised Ms Cullen’s courage in telling her mother about the abuse and later making a complaint to gardaí in 2017. She said Foran had been in loco parentis when he sexually assaulted a small girl who was “so very vulnerable, so trusting and asleep in her bedroom”.

“Her bodily integrity was violated; her trust was violated; her childhood was stolen; her innocence was stolen,” said the judge, who described the abuse as a “fundamental breach of trust” by someone with the privilege of being a father-figure.

In mitigation, Judge Crowe acknowledged that Foran had no previous convictions and had not come to adverse garda attention since these offences. She said he had a good work history and was remorseful.

Foran (60) was placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register.