Sisters ‘ruined’ by brother’s sex abuse

Two sisters who were sexually abused by their older brother throughout their childhood spoke openly yesterday of how he had ruined their lives.

Gerard O’Connor, aged 57, of 27 Grange Vale, Pinecroft, Grange, pleaded guilty to 33 counts of indecently assaulting his younger sisters, Annmarie and Margaret, at the family home at 4 O’Riordan’s Terrace, Tramore Rd, Cork, effectively throughout the 1970s when they were children and he was a young man.

The sisters wanted him named in reports of the case and, unusually, had no difficulty with their own names being published too, prosecution barrister Ray Boland said at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

Margaret O’Connor, who is now 48, brought a photograph of herself as a child to court to show to the sentencing judge: “I would like to show the judge this picture of me as a child. I am not a child now. But it is the little girl in that picture I am here standing up for today. She had nobody back then to stand up for her and mind her.

“By the time I was 15, I lost my innocence. I lost my mother and I lost my so-called brother.

“I never knew Ann Marie was being abused and she never knew I was abused.”

Ann Marie O’Connor, 50, said: “I spent most of my life trying to block it out but that never happened. I never got any education because of the abuse. I used to lie awake every night waiting for Ger to come in.

“I was not focused in school. I was terrified I was going to be taken away from my family. I was always picked on and called a dunce. I believe the abuse made me unable to have an ordinary relationship.

“I have not had a happy life. I don’t want to look back on my childhood. I put up with it [the sexual abuse by Gerard] because I believed I was protecting my sister Ann Marie. I thought if I do what he wanted he would leave Margaret alone.”

Dermot Sheehan, barrister for the defendant, apologised on Gerard O’Connor’s behalf.

The defendant cried in the witness box when he told of telling his own wife about what he had done to his sisters.

“Everything is ruined,” he said.

Garda Fiona Byrne said the counts on the indictment were sample counts in respect of abuse of both girls that went on two or three times a week throughout their childhood.

In graphic and disturbing evidence, Garda Byrne told of Gerard O’Connor getting his young sisters to masturbate him and perform oral sex on him.

Shortly before Christmas one year, Garda Byrne said, he called Margaret into the bathroom where he had stickers all over his naked body and told her to find them and move his penis and that if she was the best at the “game” she would get the best doll for Christmas.

On other occasions he would get one of them to wash his body in the bath and towel him dry.

“Those were the kind of incidents that went on two or three times a week that seemed to form a normal part of their childhood,” said Garda Byrne.

He offered each of them €10,000 compensation but they refused and wanted no money from him, Garda Byrne said.

On three dates in 1987, 1992, and 1997 Gerard O’Connor was before Cork District Court for offending modesty or indecent exposure and he was given the benefit of a dismissal under the Probation of Offenders Act or was put on a probation bond to keep the peace.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin put sentencing back until May 29 at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.