Teen wrote letter to mother outlining abuse by father, court hears

A teenager has claimed at the Central Criminal Court that she wrote a letter to her mother telling how her father had sexually abused her for over ten years but then didn't give it to her.

The now 19-year-old complainant said that in the letter she also asked her mother to leave her father and bring her then 10-year-old brother with her so that "he would be safe".

Her mother arrived back at the house shortly after she had written it but she didn't give her the letter. She said that soon afterwards, she packed a bag and left the family home.

Her 39-year-old father has pleaded not guilty to 36 charges of sexually assaulting and three charges of raping her at their Dublin home on dates from May 1996 to January 2006.

The teenager told prosecuting counsel, Mr Paul Coffey SC (with Mr Michael Bowman BL), that she had a boyfriend who was 11 years her senior at the time and her father "strongly disapproved of the relationship".

She said he had stopped her from going out and would make her give him the phone numbers of all the people she was going out with.

The complainant told Mr Coffey that she had dinner with her mother shortly after she had written the letter and although she cried during the meal, she refused to tell her mother what was wrong.

She said she was on the phone to her boyfriend a short time later and after he asked her why she was crying she told him her father had "touched her". She told him she had intended to leave a letter for her mother and go to the garda station but she didn't known what she was going to do after that.

He convinced her not to leave the letter for her mother because he said it would be unfair to her and she arranged to meet him at a nearby bus stop. They then went into the courtyard of a local church and discussed what to do next.

She told Mr Coffey the gardaí were later contacted after she and her boyfriend went to her Aunt's home. She said she has only returned to the family home once since then to get some clothes and did not know who was living there now.

The complainant told defence counsel, Mr Diarmaid McGuinness SC (with Ms Anne Marie Lawlor BL), in cross-examination, that she didn't know what had happened the letter or where it was now.

She accepted she said in her statement to gardai that she had tried to write a letter to her mother, telling her where she was going that day but she was not able to write it.

She told Mr McGuinness that she had thought of going into the garda station to make a complaint about her father and had stood at the station door on three or four occasions over the years but did not go in.

The teenager rejected a suggestion from Mr McGuinness that this was something she had just invented in the witness box. She said she could not say for certain if there was any mention of "these trips to the garda station" in her statement.

She also agreed with Mr McGuinness that she said nothing to the female relative she was closest to while on a "girls only" family weekend outside Dublin in the time around the alleged second and third rapes.

She said this woman and others in the family were still grieving the death of her maternal grandmother and she didn't want to upset her.

She further agreed with Mr McGuinness that while she was speaking on the phone to her boyfriend, this woman took the phone to speal to him and was the first member of her family to speak to him.

The hearing continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of five women and seven men.