Woman denies sexually abusing her younger brother in their Cork home

A 46-year-old woman has denied allegations that she began sexually assaulting her younger brother at their home in Co Cork when she was in her early 20s and he was still attending primary school.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denied nine charges of sexually assaulting her brother on dates between May 1st 1993 and June 30th 1997at their family home in Co Cork and one charge of sexually assaulting him in Dublin between April 1st and April 30th 1995.

The complainant told a jury of six men and six women at Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the abuse usually involved his sister taking his hand and getting him to massage her breast. On one occasion she got him to insert his finger in her vagina, he claimed.

He told how during a visit to Dublin, they ended up sharing a twin room in a hotel on a different floor to their parents and she got into his bed and sexually assaulted him.

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He said that on one of the first occasions she sexually assaulted him, she said ‘Do you want to do something’ and at the time, he didn’t know what she meant but later he began to realise that anytime she said it, it meant she was going to start something of a sexual nature.

“It was like I was on autopilot – I didn’t do anything to stop her,” said the complainant, adding that the assaults usually happened at their family home when their parents were out. The assaults ended when he turned 13 after he completed first year in secondary school.

He said he was afraid to tell his parents as his father was a chronic alcoholic and he feared if he told his parents, he would be blamed and his father would give him a beating.

“First of all when things started, I didn’t quite understand what it was - when I came to realise it was something that was wrong and problematic, I felt I would be seen as at fault or responsible and given the nature of how things were in our house, I would be hit or beaten.”

When he got older, he just wanted to get on with his life and over the years, he moved away from his family and cut all ties with them to the point that his relationship with his father became non existent while his contact with his mother was minimal.

The complainant said he never made any report of being sexually abused by his sister until 2015 after his sister and his parents made separate applications in a family law court for access to his son and he learned that his sister was on the board of management of a school.

“Because of my own experience of what she had done to me, she was the last person I wanted near my son or near any child,” said the complainant who waited until his sister’s access application was dealt with by the courts before he went to the gardaí.

The case continues.