Man gets 11 years for sex abuse of children

A man who repeatedly sexually abused his young daughters — including during a prison visit — and abused a young boy has been handed an 11-year jail sentence.

The 52-year-old Midlands man, a twice convicted rapist, cannot be identified to protect the identity of his daughters.

The circuit court sitting in Tullamore heard that he had been assessed as an ongoing risk in the community on his release and “a potential threat”.

The court had previously heard that the father had carried out acts of abuse on all three of his daughters when they were as young as four and often beat them with his leather trouser-belt.

He had also put a lock on the fridge to deny them food.

He had served sentences of five and ten years for separate rapes of females and fled the jurisdiction in 2002 after being charged with abusing his daughters. He was tracked down to Britain where he was arrested and detained in March of this year.

He pleaded guilty to a series of charges of indecently assaulting his three daughters in the 1980s and 1990s. The offences took place in the family home, in his car, and at Castlerea Prison.

He also admitted charges of sexually assaulting a boy aged between 4 and 6 years of age between 2000 and 2002.

The court heard that the man dipped his private parts in yoghurt and got his daughters to lick it.

While serving a sentence for rape in Castlerea Prison in 1999, he had been visited by his wife and daughters. He had abused one of the children by putting his hands around her and feeling her body.

He abused another of his daughters by getting her to sit on his knee and putting his hand up her top to feel her breasts.

He was freed in December 2000, but within months he was sexually abusing a boy aged 4-5 who trusted him and regarded him as a step-uncle. The court heard that the offences happened in a forest and at the accused man’s apartment.

He got the boy to take part in an “ice-cream game” which involved him licking the ice cream off the man’s genitals.

All of his victims had suffered deeply throughout their lives as a result of the abuse, the court heard.

In court yesterday, Judge Tony Hunt said he had personally found the evidence “distasteful and upsetting in the extreme”. While he was not entitled to sentence the accused on the basis of a knee-jerk reaction, he considered the offences to be very serious.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that there were multiple victims and they had been very young at the time of offending. In addition, justice, or the day of reckoning, had been delayed by his removing himself from the jurisdiction.

A particularly aggravating factor had been his well-settled pattern of sexual offending and his record.

Noting that the maximum sentence for indecently assaulting his daughters was 10 years, he imposed concurrent sentences of eight years.

The maximum tariff for sexually abusing the young boy was 14 years and he imposed concurrent sentences of 11 years.