Uncle sentenced to eight years for abuse of young niece

A man who regularly sexually abused his young niece after calling her his “special girl” has been sentenced to eight years at the Central Criminal Court.

The now 30-year-old woman read her victim impact statement into the record in which she stated: “I can never get back my childhood but today I hope to get some justice.”

She said that she had found the preparation of a victim impact statement “the toughest part of the process”.

“On the outside I look happy and bubbly but on the inside I am devastated and can never be fixed. There is no Band-Aid big enough to cover it,” the woman told the court.

She said that disclosing the abuse to her family left them devastated. “I had to watch their hearts break and they felt like it was their fault. He was not a stranger but my mother’s brother, someone my Dad once played golf with,” she continued.

The woman said the abuse has also put a strain on her relationship with her partner but added that the biggest impact it had was on her relationship with herself.

She said she has attended for counselling but feels as if she has taken “two steps forward and three steps back”.

“It is so draining, so tiring, the questions that no one can answer, the guilt, feeling dirty, that everyone is talking about me.”

The 42-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his niece, pleaded guilty to 27 charges of sexual assault and one charge of anal rape on dates between September 1988 and January 1997. The victim was aged between seven and 15 years old at the time.

Mr Justice Paul Carney said he had taken into account the “inherent gravity of the offence, the breach of trust it represented, the victim’s young age at the time and the victim impact evidence” when he imposed an eight-year sentence.

He registered the man a sex offender and suspended the last three years of the sentence on condition that he stay away from his victim and keep the peace and be of good behaviour.

Mr Justice Carney also ordered that the man undergo 18 months post release supervision.

Detective Garda Alan Clear told Mr Garnet Orange BL, prosecuting, that the woman disclosed the abuse to family members soon after the last incidence of it in 1997 but it was not reported to gardaí until her grandmother died.

Her uncle was arrested and made full admissions in a subsequent interview although he said he did not recall an incidence of anal rape which his niece had reported.

Det Garda Clear said the woman told gardai that she frequently visited her mother’s family home in Dublin where her uncle first started to abuse her when she was seven years old.

She said it happened on a regular basis and she was forced to perform sexual acts on the then 19-year-old man while he performed sexual acts on her. He also regularly “exposed himself” to her, which would generally lead to him molesting her.

On one occasion her uncle gave her a pound coin after he abused her. He told her it was their little secret and she was his special girl.

The woman said he once tried to have sex with her. She also described an incidence of anal rape to gardaí where she said she was crying and kept telling him to stop and he eventually did.

She said it “probably lasted a few minutes but she felt like it lasted forever”.

Her family later moved out of Dublin and she was never abused by him again.

Mr Colman Fitzgerald SC defending told Mr Justice Carney that his client wanted “to express his profound apologies” but accepted that this “weighs little in the balance in comparison to what he has done to her”.

He said the fact that the man had been abused himself as a child was not proffered as an excuse rather as an explanation for how he himself was treated while growing up.

Mr Fitzgerald said his client wanted to make it “absolutely clear” that the fault was his.

“He has self-disgust for what he has done. It was absolutely reprehensible and he accepts that,” Mr Fitzgerald continued.