Father to be sentenced for sex assault on adult daughter
The 75-year-old, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his daughter, told gardaí on arrest he did not have much recollection of the attack. He said if she said he did it, he must have because she “doesn’t tell lies”.
He pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexually assaulting the then 34-year-old at her Dublin flat on October 23, 1999.
Detective Garda Ann McGowan told Fionnuala O’Sullivan, prosecuting, that the woman told specialist interviewers she let her father into the flat. He held her too tight before he put his hands down the inside of her pants and touched her breasts. He then “took out his thing” from his trousers and later lay on top of her.
He slept there and left the next day. She described feeling “manky and dirty”. She was worried she was going to end up pregnant but later told officers he only “rubbed his thing off my leg”.
The now 51-year-old woman read her victim impact statement. She said writing it made her cry. She was worried nobody would believe her and found it difficult to talk to gardaí for that reason. “They will believe me now because they know I am telling the truth.”
Keith Spencer, defending, told the woman that her father wished to offer “his heartfelt apology for what happened”.
