A CO Offaly farmer told a jury at the Central Criminal Court yesterday that six women had conspired together to make false allegations of sexual abuse against him.
"If the devil came up from the floor you wouldn't see any tears from them, they are hard chaws," the 63 year old single man said in relation to his accusers.
He made this comment when prosecution counsel Mr Erwan Mill Arden SC put it to him that he was suggesting six adult women had cried in awful distress in the witness box "to see the conspiracy through".
The accused man said their allegations of being abused as children were totally untrue. The alleged victims, four sisters and two other women, had met in the sisters' family home "hatching" the conspiracy for two reasons he said.
The first reason was that in about 1990 he had told the two younger sisters not to return to his farm for hanging water filled condoms in his shed.
He had never seen a condom before but he knew it was immoral because it was not the colour of a balloon, he told Mr Mill Arden.
Years previously, he told their sister, who is now 33, not to return to his farm for being abusive when he found her against a "shaking" tree with a boy.
The accused man was giving evidence on the second day of his trial in which he faces 22 charges of rape, unlawful carnal knowledge and indecent assault of the women from 1967 to 1990.
He told his counsel Mr Seamus Sorahan SC that he had no interest in women.
He said he was "shocked" when stopped on the street in June 1995 for questioning by gardai. He denied the allegations then and continued to do so, he said.
The accused agreed he had told gardai he had no interest in women but he was incorrectly recorded as adding "I'd always let them thumb themselves".
In reply to Mr Mill Arden, he denied this was a "clear, plain, crude and explicit" sexual reference. He had meant to imply women could twiddle their thumbs or get a lift from another man.
He agreed with Mr Mill Arden he was so angry with the alleged victims over their claims that he told gardai "I wouldn't care if the world went on fire for them. I don't like them."
The accused also agreed that he twice declined the offer of a solicitor in the Garda station.
The trial continues.