A DUBLIN father has been found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of raping his two daughters and sexually abusing his son.
The jury convicted him of 80 sexual offences against the three victims. It returned two verdicts of not guilty of sexual assault against one of daughters, and still has to decide on a further 14 counts.
The man originally faced 113 charges, but Mr Justice George Birmingham ordered not guilty verdicts on 17 of the counts following legal argument.
The 73-year-old man had pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting and raping two daughters between the ages of five and 11, and to sexually assaulting his son from the age of three to six at various locations from 1997 to 2002.
The jury of eight men and four women reached their unanimous decisions on the 82 counts after 11 hours of deliberation. They return today for a third day of deliberations on the remaining counts.
In evidence, the eldest girl, now 19 years old, told Isobel Kennedy SC, prosecuting, that she was sexually abused from the age of six in the sitting room where she slept on a couch. She said after she was initially taken into care in 2000 she ran away, and was abused by her father when he picked her up in a car.
She said she was raped by her father in the house the family stayed in when they left Dublin for a time in 2001, and when she was again returned to care she regularly ran away and went to different places with him until she was finally returned to care as an 11-year-old in 2002.
The second daughter, now 18, said she was sexually abused by her father “in the sitting room, his room, my room or the car”. She said she would also be abused by her father while in the bath or in a van he owned.
The now 17-year-old son gave evidence that his father sexually abused him from the age of three until he was six, when he was placed with a foster family.
The accused man gave evidence in his own defence and said the family home “could not have been happier”, and denied physically or sexually abusing his children.
He rejected a suggestion his son was afraid to use the bathroom because he had sexually abused him there, and said the child had got the idea he was sexually abused from his foster mother.