A MAN who has been found guilty of the multiple rape, buggery and indecent assault of his daughter will be sentenced next month. The man (49), will be sentenced at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin on December 13th after being found guilty of 83 charges.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty on Wednesday of 21 charges of rape, buggery and indecent assault of his daughter.
The jury of seven men and five women at the Central Criminal Court convicted him on Wednesday of eight buggery and eight indecent assault charges from 1986-88. They found him guilty of five rape charges in 1999 and 2000.
Yesterday, the jury deliberated for 3½ hours before returning guilty verdicts on 62 charges of rape.
The man came before the court on 105 charges, but these were reduced to 83 by Mr Justice Barry White before the jury began its deliberations on day six of the trial on Wednesday.
The man had denied all of the charges, which dated from 1986 to 2000.
Mr Justice White remanded the man in custody for sentencing and ordered that his name be placed on the sex offenders’ register.
Paul Burns, prosecuting, told Mr Justice White that he would require some time for the preparation of a victim impact statement.
The victim, who is now 30, said the abuse started when she was five or six and continued for about 15 years. She said her father would abuse her “every chance he got”.
He told her that “it was just a game” and that she must not tell her mother. “He told me it would only hurt for a while,” she said.
She said she screamed and asked him to stop. She said it continued regularly after that, “nearly all my life”, and that it continued until she reported it to gardaí in 2000.
The abuse happened in the family home, outside on the ground and in the car.
She said her father was more violent when he was drunk. When she was older she used to drive to the pub to bring her father home and he would abuse her on the way.
“Every chance he got, he would abuse me, any time my mother was not there, or she was drinking, or she was asleep. He would go off drinking and would come back and he would be worse, would be more rough and cruel,” she told the court.
The court was told on Tuesday by forensic scientist Michael Burrington of the forensic science laboratory that the man is almost 100 per cent more likely to be the father of her two children than an unrelated male.
Mr Justice White told the jury that it was not an easy task to sit in judgment of one’s fellow man, and that it was even more difficult in a case such as this.
He thanked the jurors for the care they had taken in considering their verdicts.