Woman says uncle-in-law 'forced himself on her'

A Donegal woman has told a Central Criminal Court jury that her uncle-in-law regularly "forced himself on me" when she was 12 years old and staying in his home for the weekend.

The 27-year-old woman said she would kick the accused with her legs and shout at him to stop, without success. "I would curse at him, every possible one I could think of," she said.

Asked by prosecuting counsel, Mr Richard Lyons SC (with Mr Sean Gillane BL), how the accused would react to her, she replied: "He would do nothing. It didn't matter what I did, he was going to do what he wanted to anyway."

She told Mr Lyons that when she stayed with the accused, her cousins, his children, would call her to go to mass with them on Sunday mornings but he would tell them to leave her to sleep on.

Her aunt would be out working in a nearby shop so the house was empty. She said the accused would then come into her bedroom get on top of her, hold her hands together above her head, take off her underwear and his trousers and have sex with her.

She said she thought she was 12 years old when this first happened and that it would happen every Sunday "in the exact same way" when she stayed at their home "for a break".

The 50-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges of rape and 22 charges of sexual assault on dates between April 1, 1993 and June 15, 1996 when she was aged between 11 and 15 years old.

She said she attended her cousin's birthday party in her uncle's home in March 1993 and the following month she stayed again for the weekend.

She told Mr Lyons that she was asleep in bed when she woke up to find him touching her but she said she "wasn't 100 percent sure where he touched me".

She said she stayed almost every weekend with her aunt and uncle and the accused would come into her room "quite frequently" and touch her before it progressed later to him having sex with her.

She said that in 1994 while she was in the accused's car with him he asked her to perform oral sex on him.

She told Mr Lyons that she agreed to do so because "he kept asking, asking and asking" and if she didn't do it for him he would keep asking.

The complainant she didn't "entirely understand" what it was. She felt disgusted and she didn't want to do it. She wasn't doing it right so the accused pushed her head down onto his penis making her vomit.

She said he used to buy her clothes and jewellery, including a T-bar necklace, silver rings and a watch.

She told Mr Lyons she moved abroad sometime after making her complaint to gardai and the accused rang her to ask her to come home and "sort things out".

"He said that I had made allegations against him and he said that he had never touched me," she added.

The trial continues before Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne and a jury of seven women and five men.