A MAN accused of the rape and assault of his daughter on multiple occasions over 15 years, denied to gardaí that he was the father of her child, a court was told yesterday.
The 49-year-old man said his daughter’s claims were “all lies”. The Central Criminal Court heard that when gardaí put it to him that he was the father of his daughter’s child, he replied: “God forbid. I am not.”
The man has pleaded not guilty to 105 charges – 81 of rape, 12 of buggery and 12 of indecent assault – between 1985 and 2000.
The complainant, who is now 30, said on the opening day of the trial on Tuesday that she was subjected to buggery, indecent assault and rape by her father over a 15-year period from the time she was about five.
She told the court yesterday she was also subjected to violence by her mother. She said she noticed a change in her mother as she and her siblings got older. “If she couldn’t beat you enough, she’d bite you,” she said.
The complainant said her father raped her “every chance he got”, and he even raped her shortly after she gave birth in her late teens.
Under cross-examination by Martin Giblin, defending, the woman said the name of the man registered on her first child’s birth certificate was not the name of the father of the child, neither was the name on the birth certificate of her second child the name of the father, she said.
“I was forced to put a name on the birth cert, the same thing on the other birth cert,” she said.
The woman told the court the name of her partner, “but he is not the kids’ father either”, she said.
It was put to her that her father had never raped her as she had said. The woman replied: “Yes, he did”. She said she went to the Garda in 2000 and reported what had happened to her.
Sgt Ann Byrne told the court she arrested the accused in 2000. Memos of two interviews with him were read to the court.
In the interviews, the accused man said that his daughter’s partner was the father of her first child. “I don’t like him at all,” he told gardaí. He agreed he had threatened to kill him, but said he did not mean it.
The woman had earlier told the court she could not be specific about dates but that the abuse started when she was five or six. She said the first time it happened her mother was not at home.
Her father told her that it was “just a game” and that she must not tell her mother.
“He told me it would only hurt for a while,” she said. She said that her father had sex with her inside and outside the family home.
She was too afraid to tell anyone and her father had warned her not to say anything or he would hit her.
The trial continues today.