I had no childhood, man raped by father tells court

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

A YOUNG man who was raped and abused by his father over a three-year period has spoken of the terror under which he lived.

"I never had a childhood," he told the Central Criminal Court yesterday in an emotional victim impact statement. "The feeling of lying awake at night, afraid to go asleep, afraid to stay awake, waiting for him to come to my room and abuse me was terrifying. I had no choice but to let him do it."

All his life the survivor of the systematic abuse said he lived in fear; in fear of his father’s threats "not to give information to social workers, threats when he came from the pub, threats not to tell teachers or anyone outside the house what was going on at home".

The victim’s 52-year-old father was convicted last month of 47 counts of sexual assault and rape on his son when he was aged between 12 and 15.

"I can’t say when my childhood started or finished because as far as I am concerned I never had a childhood."

Fear of his father ruled his life, he told the court.

"It is an awful thing to live in fear. I never knew what answer to give him. What I thought was the right answer could be the wrong one depending on the mood he was in."

At school, the now 20-year-old said, while other children were happy going home, going different places with their parents, having nice lunches at school, being clean and tidy, "I had nothing to look forward to going home and things got a lot worse for me when I left national school and started secondary school. It was then the real nightmare began when (he) started sexually abusing me."

He said he still has nightmares of his father raping him: "(He) has never shown any remorse, sympathy and never once said he was sorry to me, but instead chose to blame everything on me. Under oath he called me a liar in court and even said that I found it easy to give evidence."

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, March 02, 2010