Woman, 47, weeps as she is jailed for sexually abusing her own brother

A 47-year-old woman wept in court as she was jailed for six months after being found guilty by a jury found of sexually assaulting he brother when he was aged from nine and she was in her early twenties.

Judge Brian O’Callaghan said that what had struck him most forcibly following conviction were the complete lack of remorse and the complete lack of insight by the woman into the harm that she had caused her younger brother after such a terrible breach of trust.

Judge O’Callaghan noted the defence submissions and he noted that the woman had no previous convictions and had never come to the attention of the gardai before or since this incident and in all other respects she was a completely law abiding person and unlikely to re-offend.

However Judge O’Callaghan said he had come to court hoping that there would be some expression of remorse from the woman for everyone’s sake in the case but it was clear that she had no insight or appreciation of the harm she had caused to her sibling by her abuse.

Judge O’Callaghan he noted that in the course of contesting the case, she had wrongly accused her brother of fabricating the allegations of sex abuse in order to prevent her gaining access to her nephew in the family law matter when it was clear that the man’s sole motivation was to protect his own young son.

The judge said there was an element of premeditation in that the assaults happened when their parents were away and she was guilty of a huge breach of trust not just as her brother’s older sister but also in respect of her parents who had entrusted her to mind him only for her to use him for her own sexual gratification.

He recognised that the conviction would mean an end to her career while a custodial sentence would also have an impact on her elderly parents but he felt that such was the breach of trust, the seriousness of the harm and the lack of remorse, he felt he had to impose a custodial sentence.

The woman pleaded not guilty to all ten charges of sexual assault, and a jury of seven women and five men returned with their verdicts yesterday afternoon.

The jury found her - by a majority 10-2 verdict - guilty of four counts of sexually assaulting her brother. They found her not guilty of six counts of sexual assault at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

The parties cannot be identified for legal reasons. Furthermore, the judge made an additional order that certain other matters within the trial could not be reported because of other legal restrictions.

The jury was not told in this trial that it was in fact a retrial and that another jury who heard the case in February were unable to reach a verdict on any count.

The complainant told prosecution barrister Noel Whelan what allegedly happened to him on ten incidents between May 1993 and April 1995.

He said that because of the age difference between himself and his sister, people used to say his sister was like his second mother.

Their mother was in court for the case and comforted the accused when she broke down in tears at the guilty verdict yesterday afternoon.

The complainant said the first alleged incident occurred when he was nine and his parents were away for a weekend in May 1993.

He described other similar incidents.

He said these disputed incidents occurred in the family home when there was no one else present and once in a hotel in Dublin when the family were away together.

He described the feeling of being like auto-pilot where he did nothing to stop her and did not understand what was happening. He thought when he was nine that if people found out about it he would be seen as being at fault.

The man told in his Victim Impact Statement how his life had been changed irrevocably by the abuse his sister had perpetrated on him, leading to him to attempt suicide when he was just 12 as a means of escape and to a complete lack of trust in others that took him years to overcome.

He told how every morning, he used to put on “a mental and emotional suit of armour” to face the day and pretend that he was leading a normal life when the abuse continued to haunt him particularly by night when he suffered nightmares right through his teenager years and beyond.

Defence barrister, Donal O’Sullivan BL acknowledged that his client had fully contested the case but he pleaded for leniency on a number of grounds including the fact that the woman had a number of serious medical conditions.