Carlow man found guilty of indecently assaulting daughter

A Carlow resident has been convicted of repeatedly indecently assaulting his daughter in a car in Co Kildare nearly 30 years ago.

The 62-year-old man, who can not be named for legal reasons, had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four counts of indecent assault against his daughter in Co Kildare on dates between October 1981 and March 1984.

The jury of nine men and three women returned their verdict of guilty on all charges on day four of the trial following almost four and half hours of deliberation.

Judge Frank O’Donnell thanked the jury for their care and attention during the trial.

He remanded the man on continuing bail after hearing that there was no garda objection.

“My immediate reaction is to incarcerate an accused in a case like this after he has put the complainant through a trial,” Judge O’Donnell said before he set a sentence date for next month.

During the trial now 41-year-old complainant told Mr Sean Gillane SC (with Mr Daniel Boland BL), prosecuting, that on the night the first incident occurred her father gave her a lift into a nearby town to meet friends and picked her up again at about 10.30pm.

She said he drove on back roads and pulled into a gateway.

The woman said her father told her that her mother did not know she had gone into town that night and she “owed him a favour”.

She said he pulled her hand across and made her perform a sex act him. She said it did not last very long and he told her it was “our little secret”.

The witness said her father told her she was his favourite and it made him feel good.

She said a similar incident occurred later that year. She said he also asked her to open her trousers to see what colour underpants she was wearing before putting his hand on her “privates”.

She said no one else was there during these events and it was usually night time.

The woman said her father would give her money and also gave her condoms.

She said on another occasion he told her to walk up the road and he would pick her up. She said she began walking and he picked her up about five minutes later, drove for a time, then pulled in some distance away.

She said he made her masturbate him again and she was about 12 or 13 years old at this time.

The woman said a further incident occurred when she was nearly 15 years old. She said she was in the car with her father, that he made her touch him, then got her head and pushed it down to make her perform oral sex.

She said she could not breathe and felt sick. She did not refuse as “you could not say no to him”. He told her she was a good girl and she made him feel good.

The woman told Mr Gillane she recalled an incident some years later in about 1994 when her father was confronted about the alleged abuse. She said herself, her sister and her mother were in a pub when her sister told her father that she knew what had happened.

She said they went back to her sister's house and there was a lot of shouting between her sister and her father.

She said her father admitted the sexual abuse to her sister and apologised. He appeared very upset and shocked because she had sworn to him that she would never tell anyone.