Offaly farmer convicted of sexually assaulting niece

A Co Offaly farmer faces jail after being convicted by a jury at the Central Criminal Court on nine charges of sexually assaulting his now 29-year-old niece more than a decade ago.

Mr Justice Peter Charleton remanded the 54-year-old man on continuing bail for sentence in January and said: "I would have to be thinking of a custodial sentence in view of the seriousness of the offences".

Two of the guilty verdicts were by 10-2 majority and the rest were unanimous decisions. The offences happened in Offaly.

The jury also returned not guilty verdicts on 18 counts alleging that the farmer raped his niece on dates from 1993 to 1998, and on two further charges of sexually assaulting her on dates in 1994.

No verdict was returned on one charge alleging that the father of a family raped his niece on a date between May and September 1995 when she was 17 years old. The foreman announced that the jury had disagreed.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, originally faced and denied a total of 44 charges - 27 of rape on dates from 1992 to 1998, and 17 of indecent and sexual assault on dates from 1990 to 1995.

Mr Justice Charleton had earlier withdrawn 13 of the 44 charges from the jury following an application by defence counsel, Mr Patrick Gageby SC (with Ms Sara Phelan BL) at the end of the prosecution case.

He directed that not guilty verdicts be recorded on them: three counts of rape in 1994, two in 1995 and two on dates in 1997-98; two of sexual assault in 1993 and four in 1995.

It was day-four of the trial and the jury announced its decisions following just around seven-and-a-half hours of deliberation and having spent one night in a hotel.

Mr Justice Charleton thanked the seven men and five women of the jury for their care and attention to the case and authorised a seven years exemption from jury service for them if they wished to avail of it.

Previously in the trial, the complainant told prosecuting counsel, Mr Niall Durnin SC (with Ms Dara Foynes BL), her uncle raped and sexually assaulted her from the time she was abut 12 years old and said these things happened in both their homes, in his car and in a milking parlour.

She said there were also occasions when he raped and sexually assaulted her while his wife was in the house and she was sharing their daughter’s bedroom. She said she would try to push him away but did not scream out at these times because the other girl was sometimes still in the room.

The woman also claimed that her uncle regularly raped and sexually assaulted her when she was babysitting his children while his wife was in the USA.

She denied in cross-examination by Mr Gageby [defence counsel, Mr Patrick Gageby SC (with Ms Sara Phelan BL)] that she willingly had sex with her uncle when she was 17 years old.

She also denied she bought him a present of pornography and that on one visit to her family home she jumped up on him and threw her legs astride his waist.

She further denied saying anything "uncouth or sexual" to him and agreed it was her case that it was her uncle who spoke to her in this manner.

The woman rejected a suggestion from Mr Gageby that she willingly came to her uncle’s bedroom in 1995 without any asking. She said she never approached him or "came on to him" in any way.

She replied: "No, what I am saying is true" when Mr Gageby said her uncle admitted slapping her on the bottom and making comments about it, but "that there was never any rape as you have described".

Pressed by Mr Gageby, she accepted there was a solicitor in court from a firm that has helped victims of sexual assault claim compensation from transgressors, but did not admit that it was her intention at the moment to sue her uncle.

"I am currently being assessed because of the trauma I have suffered," she said. "My aim at the end of all this is to put these rapes and sexual assaults behind me and move on with my life and that may require counselling."

When Mr Gageby told her there was no stamp on his client’s wife’s passport for travelling to the USA in 1994 as she had claimed, the woman replied his wife must have been on holidays.

She did not remember him raping her or sexually assaulting her in his bedroom, but accepted that in her Garda statement she said that during the two-week period she was babysitting, her uncle would wait until the children had gone to bed and then "forcibly bring" her into his own bedroom.

"There are such a significant number of sexual assaults and rapes and obviously I was under extreme stress. I can’t tell you where it was in the house, but I can say it happened in the house," she replied.

She did not accept a suggestion from Mr Gageby that she also had trouble remembering dates and times. "I can remember seasons. I just can’t remember whether they happened at 3.30 or 4.30," she said.

She agreed that she never received any injuries from the alleged rapes, even one when she was 14 years old, but said that she would often be "sore inside". It would clear up in a couple of days so she never needed to visit her doctor afterwards.

She said in her direct evidence and in cross-examination that there were occasions when her uncle raped and sexually assaulted her while his wife was in the house and she was sharing their daughter’s bedroom.

She said he would regularly come into the room and say he was taking his daughter to the bathroom and then sexually assault her or rape her, sometimes when the young girl was still in the room.

She agreed with Mr Gageby that if the daughter looked over when he was sexually assaulting her, the girl would see something "unusual" as her Daddy would be in bed with her cousin.

She said the assault did not last very long because he "was conscious he was supposed to be taking his daughter to the bathroom" and she agreed that afterward he would go back to bed with his wife.

The woman’s first cousin said in defence evidence that when 13 years old, the complainant told her she was having sex with two men who were friends of her parents.

She said she did not believe her cousin’s stories at the time. "I felt it was building castles in the air, a bravado."

She would she would often meet with the complainant when they were teenagers and they would discuss boys. Her cousin told her she was regularly having sex with "one man" she said was a friend of her parents, either in his sitting room while his wife was in bed or in his car.

She said her cousin also claimed to be having sex with a local businessman who was a friend of her father. She claimed she had intercourse with this man in a hotel function room while her parents were in another part of the building.

The witness told Mr Gageby that the complainant was "a capable, confident, intelligent teenager" who could not have been described as "naive, vulnerable or a pushover".

The witness did not accept a suggestion from Mr Durnin that she was making these stories up as she went along in a bid to discredit her cousin and protect her uncle.

"No, I have nothing to gain by sitting here," she replied.

She accepted that she no longer talked to the complainant and said she was not too concerned about hearing these kind of stories from a young teenager because her cousin was "always telling different stories".

The farmer’s wife told Mr Gageby that when she was visiting the complainant’s family home one evening the then teenager approached them and said that she had left "a present" for her uncle in his car.

She said that on the way home she noticed there were two pornographic magazines under the passenger seat.

Asked by Mr Durnin, in cross-examination, did she not think: "Why on earth is this girl giving my husband pornographic magazines?", she replied: "I was totally disgusted. It didn’t cross my mind".

She said when she went home and saw "how explicit" the magazines were, her husband told her "to throw them in the fire before the children see them".

The woman said that neither she nor her husband ever had any cause to check on her daughter after they came home from a night out while the complainant was baby-sitting.

She said she first heard about the criminal proceedings against her husband in December 2003 and first heard of the civil proceedings on Monday of this week.

She agreed with Mr Gageby that she heard the allegation that her husband had raped and sexually assaulted his niece while the teenager was staying in the same room as their daughter before going back to bed with her, but said this could not be true.

"Would I not know if he had sex with somebody? My husband and I always had sex on a Saturday night," she said.