A boy who was allegedly raped by his father and forced to have sex with his mother left his second foster home because his foster mother felt he needed more specialist care for his sexualised behaviour.
“We knew he needed more help. We knew he had to go somewhere to get extensive therapy, where he could get the help he needed so he could have some chance of a future,” the woman said.
The foster mother was giving evidence on day 12 of the trial at the Central Criminal Court.
She said she and her husband didn’t want the child to leave nor did he want to leave them but they all realised it was necessary.
The boy has previously alleged his father raped him, sexually abused him with a hot poker and forced him to have sex with his mother over the course of several years from when he was about six-years-old.
The father is alleged to have filmed some of these incidents and shown them to others.
He is further alleged to have held a gun to the child’s head and to have left him locked in a box.
The parents face a total of 82 charges of abuse between 2007 and 2011 in Waterford.
The father and mother have pleaded not guilty to 16 counts each of sexual exploitation and one charge each of child cruelty.
The mother has also denied 16 counts of sexual assault while the father denies 16 counts of anal rape and 16 counts of sexual assault with a poker.
The child’s second foster mother told prosecuting counsel Pauline Walley SC that on one occasion when the child was eight-years-old he brought a few younger children down to his bedroom.
He said he was playing hotel before he pulled down the blinds and asked to see the children’s private parts.
The woman said the child was never allowed to be alone with younger children again.
Incidents
She told Ms Walley on another occasion he tried to touch her breasts and kiss her on the mouth.
She said he would also grind on her leg and peer down her top.
The woman said the boy once admitted that he had tried to watch her in the shower and she was very upset with him.
She reprimanded him and told him that he had invaded her privacy.
She said on another occasion she and the boy were play fighting on the couch and she accidentally kicked the boy in his private area.
He became very upset and aggressively told her that if she ever touched him there again he would “put his willy up my arse”. He then laughed.
The boy then went on to tell his foster mother that his father had “shoved his willy up my bum”.
She asked him if he was sure and asked if it could have been the “stick” his father used, as he had previously told her.
He said he was sure it was his father’s penis and said he had been too afraid and embarrassed to say it before.
She said the boy always talked kindly about his mother and said sometimes she would stop his father from abusing him.
The boy said he “was always afraid for her, afraid she would get into trouble”.
The witness said the child had access meetings with his mother and he always looked forward to them.
She said sometimes he would ask to see his father because he wanted to see if he had changed.
The woman said the child would sometimes “almost take on the persona of his dad” when recounting an incident of abuse.
“He would start using bad language. He would get angry, hitting himself, pace up and down and be quite in your face,” she said, adding that it could be quite scary
“Once you re-assured that you still loved him, he would get out of it and revert back to the happy, relaxed child he had been,” she told Ms Walley.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Robert Eagar and a jury.