A JURY has failed to agree on three remaining counts of neglect and sexual abuse against a father of five earlier convicted of the neglect and physical abuse of some of his children.
The 42-year-old man was earlier this week found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of neglecting four of his children and three counts of assaulting each of his sons after 8½ hours of deliberation by the jury.
The jury failed to agreed a verdict on day 13 of the trial on the final counts of rape and sexual assault of the man’s daughter and a charge of neglecting his youngest son after a further hour of deliberation following a replaying of the 10-year-old girl’s video-link evidence over the past two days.
Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne thanked the jury of five men and seven women and exempted them from further jury service for life.
She remanded the man in custody until his sentence date on June 18th.
The five children, three boys and two girls, were aged between four and 11 when they were taken into care.
During the trial the court heard graphic evidence from social workers and foster parents of the condition of the children when they were taken into care in September 2007.
A social worker who described the level of long-term dirt and grime on the girls said she initially believed they had dark hair and it was only on her next visit to them, after they had been washed by their foster parents, that she discovered they actually had fairer-coloured hair.
The eldest boy, then 11, put food into his pockets as he ate hungrily when given chips by gardaí.
The foster mother of the two girls said that when they arrived at her house, aged eight and four, they were filthy, wearing soiled underpants and the youngest girl was “walking alive” with lice.
The woman gave evidence they were not toilet trained and ate “like savages”. The foster mother of one of the boys said that when he was brought to her home he was wearing clothes two sizes too small and covered his food with his hands when eating as if to stop someone taking it.
She said he could not understand that he had to wash and change his underwear every day.
The foster mother of the eldest boy said he would eat “to the point of being sick” and when he was aged 11, he had “the reading ability of a junior infant”.
The now 10-year-old girl told Isobel Kennedy SC, prosecuting, that her father raped her in her bedroom when she was eight. She said he sat on her bed, took off her clothes and “told me what he was going to do”. She said he then got on top of her and “went up and down”, then put his “private” inside her “private”.
She also gave evidence that she would wear her daytime clothes to bed at night and did not have pyjamas.
The now eight-year-old second youngest child said that his father hit him “lots of times” using a belt and it hurt him. He said he was slapped whether he was good or bold. The now 13-year-old second-eldest boy said that his father kicked and punched him with his fists and also used shoes and belts to hit him.
The eldest child, a 14-year-old boy, said his father hit him “on the backside” with his hands, shoes, a cane or a whip but that he thought his father only did so when he misbehaved. “He went a little too far but I think he did it for my own good,” he said.
The accused man told Blaise O’Carroll SC, defending, when giving evidence on his own behalf, that he and his wife had a plan that he “would take the blame for everything” to avoid the children going into care.
He said: “I would take the blame for everything and she would get the children but my wife went a little too far.”
When Mr O’Carroll asked why they had this plan, the accused told him: “I did not think the children should go into care. At the time I did not. I thought she was a good mother.”
He told Mr O’Carroll that the only reason he could think of for his daughter alleging he had sexually abused her was that his wife had told her to say it.