Man jailed for abuse of niece

A Dublin man has been jailed for eight and a half years at the Central Criminal Court for raping and sexually assaulting his young niece between 1998 and 2005.

The 45-year-old man would regularly have sex with the girl, sometimes while watching porn DVDs, at her grandmother’s home when she was between eight and 14 years old.

He pleaded guilty to 14 sample counts of sexual assault and one of raping the now 19-year-old woman from July 14, 1998 and July 13, 2007.

Garda Eithne Kennedy told Ms Caroline Cummins BL, prosecuting, that the girl’s uncle first raped her in his bedroom at her granny’s house when she was eight years old.

Gda Kennedy told Ms Cummins that the man left the country around the time the girl made her first complaint in 2005.

He was extradited back to Ireland and entered an early guilty plea to rape and sex assault.

His counsel, Mr Erwin Mill-Arden SC (with Ms Marie Torrens BL), had asked Mr Justice Paul Carney to consider this early plea and the fact the man had used no “gratuitous violence” during the abuse.

Mr Mill-Arden submitted that his client had spared his victim and her family the “considerable distress of a trial” and had pleaded despite no medical evidence to back up the allegations against him.

Counsel submitted that “for what it’s worth” his client wished to apologise to his victim and wrote in a letter addressed to the court that he hoped “life gets better for her.”

Mr Justice Carney accepted the man had genuine remorse and declared him a sex offender.