Man, 73, faces life term for raping daughters and abusing son

A 73-YEAR-OLD man faces life in prison after being convicted of raping his two daughters and sexually abusing his son.

A jury in the Central Criminal Court found him guilty of the majority of the 113 charges against him on Thursday and returned another nine convictions yesterday. They acquitted him of two counts of sexual assault and failed to agree on verdicts for another seven charges. Mr Justice George Birmingham had previously ordered them to return not guilty verdicts on a further 17 counts.

The Dublin man had pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting, raping and orally raping two daughters between the ages of five and 11 and sexually assaulting his son from the age of three to six at various locations from 1997 to 2002. The abuse happened in locations around the country including shopping centre toilets and on the DART.

Evidence was heard that after the HSE took one of the girls into a care home, the accused would get her to run away so he could rape her.

Following his conviction, the court heard from Detective Garda Deirdre Walsh that the man has previous convictions for indecent assault.

The jury of eight men and four women took over 13 hours to reach their verdicts after a seven-week trial. Mr Justice Birmingham thanked them for their “outstanding commitment” to the case and said their service was “a splendid example of citizenship at its best”.

He ordered the man be placed on the sex offenders register and remanded him in custody until sentencing in October.

He told the court during his evidence that his family persuaded him to return some weeks later.

A court made an order requiring that the children be returned to care in October 2001 and the family absconded out of the Dublin area for a time, but were later found by Gardaí and the children returned to care.

The girls were placed in care homes from which they repeatedly escaped and were later placed in foster homes. The boy was placed with a foster family from which he absconded only once when his biological family left Dublin in October 2001.

The accused man gave evidence in his own defence and said the family home “could not have been happier” and denied physically or sexually abusing his children.

He rejected a suggestion that his son was afraid to use the bathroom because he had sexually abused him there and said the child had got the idea he was sexually abused from his foster mother.

He agreed with Mr O’Carroll he was interviewed by Gardaí in 2006 in relation to allegations of sexual abuse and later charged. He said he pleaded not guilty because the offences never happened.

An older brother and sister of the complainants gave evidence they were not sexually abused by their father and that they did not recall anything untoward happening with their younger siblings.