Boy says parents’ alleged sex abuse was real despite past claims

A child who was allegedly raped by his father and forced to "have sex" with his mother told a social worker that the allegations "weren't real", a Central Criminal Court trial has heard.

However, the now 12-year-old boy told the trial on Wednesday that the abuse did happen and he only said it didn’t because he didn’t want to come to court.

On Tuesday, the boy alleged his father had raped him, sexually abused him with a hot poker and forced him to have sex with his mother in their Co Waterford home. The man is also alleged to have held a gun to the child's head.

The boy said he believed he was raped about once a month for a three-and-a-half-year period from when he was six-years-old.

The boy’s parents face a total of 82 charges of abuse between 2007 and 2011.

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.

On Wednesday, the boy told Pauline Walley SC, prosecuting, it was difficult to remember the details of the abuse "because it happened quite a while ago and because you kind of want to box it all out and throw it away".

The child said he believed he was about eight-years-old when he was forced by his father to have sex with his mother, that it would happen once a week and it would last between 45 minutes and an hour.

He said his father would sometimes watch football on television in the same room while it happened, before telling the boy “right, done, off to bed”.

The boy was taken into care when he was eight and placed with foster families.

He is giving evidence via video-link from the UK, where he is currently in residential care.

He said he didn’t want to give his exact location “for privacy reasons”.

Concerns

He agreed with Ms Walley that he had had a conversation with his social worker last year where he talked about his concerns that his father would find out where he was. The social worker assured him this would not happen.

He said he then told the social worker the abuse did not happen.

“I said it wasn’t real, just to be able to get out of it so I didn’t have to do it [the court case], but it is real,” he said.

The trial continues on Thursday before Mr Justice Robert Eagar and a jury.