Man gets 15 years for abusing niece

A Clare resident who began sexually abusing his Limerick niece from the age of six has been jailed for 15 years at the Central Criminal Court.

The 48-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, later began raping the child from when she was aged nine on a regular basis in his bedsit in Co Clare.

The court heard how the child would beg her mother not to let her stay over with him, telling her: “Please Mum, don’t let me go, I’ll be good.”

During the trial, the victim said her mother would still let her uncle take the child to the flat every few weeks.

While staying over with him the man would molest the child and force her to touch his private parts. He also forced her to perform more explicit sexual acts on him, including oral rape.

Last December, a jury found him guilty of eight counts of rape and 17 counts of sexual assault of the child between October 1998 and April 2003.

The man had pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to 32 counts of raping and assaulting the woman causing her harm between October 1998 and October 2004.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on seven counts.

Mr Justice Paul Carney declared the man a sex offender and said he had “lost his most fruitful source of mitigation” by denying the charge, not showing any remorse, and having previous convictions.

Mr Justice Carney said it was “an additional aggravating factor” that the man had filmed the abuse, had “plied her with alcohol, including poitín” and had shown her pornography.

He sentenced the man to 15 years in prison and said there was “nothing of consequence in favour of him” to allow for any of that term to be suspended. The man was ordered to carry out 18 months post-release supervision.

After his arrest in 2012, the man told gardaí that the victim was a liar. He said that he had taken care of her and her siblings because their parents were alcoholics and were unable to look after them.

In her victim impact report the woman, now in her early 20s, said that instead of looking after her, uncle had ruined her childhood.

Describing her anxiousness at visiting his flat knowing the abuse she would suffer there each time, she said: “I used to be frightened for my life”. She said she turned to alcohol at a young age.

The victim realised the man was recording the abuse when on one occasion he played video footage of it to her. While doing this he looked over at her and smiled. He would also play pornographic movies to her.