Teen wrote suicide note over sex abuse

A jury has been read the suicide note of a teenage girl who said she was repeatedly sexually abused by her mother’s partner.

The note’s author, now 26, was giving evidence on the third day of the trial of the 64-year-old Offaly man.

He is also alleged to have abused her older sister and two younger step-sisters.

He has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to 100 charges of sex assault and oral rape of four girls on dates between May 1989 and Dec 2006.

The woman told Bernard Condon SC, prosecuting, that she tried to kill herself at the age of 15 because of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of the accused.

She confirmed she had written the note and addressed it to her father but said she was unable to read it to the jury. She said she took an overdose a month after the letter was written.

Mr Condon then read the letter, which started with the words “Dear Daddy” and ended with the girl’s signature, “died July 25, 2002 RIP”.

The letter read: “Dear Daddy, I thought I would drop you a few lines to tell you that all this shit is really doing my head in and I just can’t cope with it anymore. Ma was not going to tell me who I could hang around with and neither could you.

“It’s alright now because you all got your own way and I don’t need anywhere to live anymore.

“I am going to commit suicide. Please make sure he [the accused] gets locked up because it is his fault you are going to lose me.

“Thanks for all you help Dad, I don’t know what I would have done without you. I know the pigs were up last night, cause I heard them. It looks like they won’t be sending me into care but they will be sending me to the grave. Thank God.

“I am too young to handle this, my whole life has been ruined.

“I really wish I could stay around to look after you Daddy but it would ruin my own life. I hope I did not hurt your feelings. I will miss you and I still love you.”

The woman earlier told Mr Condon that she was first abused by the man when she was nine. She said he molested her, told her not to tell anyone, and ordered her to go and play.

She said the abuse continued on “a daily basis if he got the chance”, and described similar incidents she said occurred in the family home and in a garden shed.

She said when she was about 12 or 13 he started to get her to perform oral sex on him.

She told her father and aunt about the abuse when she was 15 and social workers were contacted.

The woman told Mr Condon that her father spoke to the gardaí about the abuse but the next day her younger step-sister contacted her and told her she could move back into the family home if she withdrew the allegations.

She said she needed somewhere to live at the time and had nowhere else to go.

The woman said when she returned to the house the man said he would stop touching her if she withdrew the allegations. She retracted her statement he resumed molesting her a few days later, she said.

She said she left the house in 2006 and moved in with her boyfriend. The man called to the house and told her he wanted “to get me for the ride”.

The woman agreed with John Paul Shortt SC, defending, that a document from the local Garda station said her father had brought in the suicide note and claimed the accused had been abusing his daughter.

The document said the gardaí interviewed the then 15-year-old but she denied anything had happened. She told gardaí she had written the suicide note to annoy her father.

She told Mr Shortt that the accused had made her withdraw the allegations and made her say this to gardaí.

She denied that her father had “any influence” in writing the suicide note

She said she did not know why she had not moved in with her father after the overdose rather than returning to the family home.

The woman said she had no recollection of giving instructions to the hospital that her father was not allowed to see her during her stay there after Mr Shortt read case notes from social workers which stated this.

She said “I don’t know, I can’t remember” giving such orders and said she had no recollection of throwing eggs at her father’s house some months later.

The woman refused to accept that her overdose had been “accidental” rather than suicidal. Counsel said to her that medical reports from that time suggest that it was an accidental overdose.