Man who began raping daughter at age 8 is jailed for 12 years

A MAN who admitted “grooming” his daughter before raping and sexually assaulting her has received a 12-year sentence to run consecutive to an earlier jail term for raping two other teenage girls.

The 42-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping the girl, starting when she was aged 8, on dates from April 20, 2000 to April 14, 2007.

He also pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the girl on a date unknown between May 14, 1998 and June 4, 1998.

Mr Justice Paul Carney, who previously imposed a 12-year sentence on the man for raping two other teenagers, said that the 42-year-old has a “propensity when faced with adversity to rape children and young girls”.

He ordered that the 12-year sentence for raping his daughter begin “upon the lawful termination” of the earlier sentence.

The man is serving the previous 12-year sentence imposed after he pleaded guilty to raping the two teenage girls.

At the sentence hearing, Sgt Ingrid Moore told Will Fennelly, prosecuting, that the man’s daughter fell pregnant after he raped her and she felt she “had no choice but to travel to the UK with her mother to have an abortion” as her father told her the baby “would come out like an alien, all deformed and disfigured”.

When questioned by gardaí in relation to the offences, Sgt Moore said the accused admitted he had sex with his daughter.

She said he admitted he brought his daughter from her bedroom to the living room on one occasion and showed her a pornographic video to “educate her to what happens between adults”. He then told her to remove her clothes and raped her.

On another occasion he brought his daughter for a drive in the family car, purchased condoms and raped her in the back seat. “You may say I was grooming her,” he told gardaí.

Sgt Moore agreed with Pádraig Dwyer, defending, that the man was co-operative and admitted his wrongdoing.

In her victim impact statement, which the girl read out in court, she said she “hated him” (her father) because he took away her innocence. She said she always believed abortion was wrong but felt she “had to get rid of the baby” because her father told her it would look like an alien.

“No one knew what he was doing to me. I had no confidence, no self-esteem and my school friends thought I was weird,” she said. “I hope he rots in prison because that’s what he deserves,” she said.

The hardest part was “reliving everything” when she gave statements to gardaí.

Mr Dwyer submitted to the judge that his client had shown remorse for his crime as outlined in a psychiatric report, that he had been himself sexually abused and had been deemed at low risk of re-offending. Mr Justice Carney said a dysfunctional background provided “little, if any, mitigation”.