A man has gone on trial at the Central Criminal Court accused of the serial rape and sexual assault of his younger sister over a five-year-period, including on the day of her First Holy Communion.
The 49-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to 56 counts of rape and 15 counts of sexual assault in Co Waterford on dates between December 1983 and June 1988.
The abuse is alleged to have started when the complainant was aged four and continued until she was 10 or 12.
The woman, who is now 41, says her brother abused her in their family home and at various other nearby locations including fields, woodlands, school grounds, a community centre and a clubhouse.
Specific dates
Opening the case, Caroline Biggs SC, prosecuting, told the jury that two of the alleged rapes took place on specific dates, namely the girl’s First Holy Communion in 1984 and the day after it.
The court heard that from the time the woman was about four years old, her brother would touch her inappropriately, and that these incidents progressed to oral rape and rape as she got older.
The woman took the stand and said that by the age of six she was being raped regularly, as she remembered sitting in senior infants in school and feeling sore.
She said her brother would bring her up to his bedroom under the illusion that they were going to play a board game, but then would then lock his door and abuse her.
The woman said the abuse also took place in the sitting room when there was no one in the house, and on a weekly basis on the nights when her mother was at bingo in the local community hall.
Hunting gun
She said her brother started off asserting that what he was doing was a “secret” but that this progressed to a threat to kill her mother, on one occasion using his father’s hunting gun to threaten her.
“He took the shotgun one day and he came into my room and he told me that if I told anyone what was going on, that he was going to shoot my mother,” she told the court.
She said her brother would force her to watch pornographic videos and re-enact what was happening in the film, be it an oral sex scene or sexual intercourse.
The woman said she would try to squirm away and turn her head so she would not have to look at the videos, but that he would hold her head in place to force her to watch.
The man was arrested in August 2015 on foot of allegations made by his sister, but he denied any improper sexual activity with her.
The trial continues next Monday before Ms Justice Eileen Creedon and a jury.