Alleged abuser fathered my first child, court told

A woman has told a Central Criminal Court jury that her alleged abuser fathered her first child when she was 16-years-old.

The now 54-year-old woman told Mr Patrick McGrath SC, prosecuting, that the accused laughed at her when she told him she was pregnant and warned her to keep his name out of it.

She said she kept the pregnancy a secret but was accompanied to the hospital by her mother when she went into labour. She said her parents never asked her who the father of the child was and she never volunteered the man’s name. She immediately gave the baby up for adoption.

The complainant had earlier told the jury that the accused regularly raped her in the office of his family business after giving her a lift from Sunday morning Mass.

Her 51-year-old cousin had earlier told Mr McGrath that that the man raped and indecently assaulted her over a three year period when she was 13 years of age.

The 75-year-old accused, has pleaded not guilty to 14 charges in relation to both rape and indecent assault of the older female complainant on dates between January 1, 1970 and August 31, 1973.

He has also pleaded not guilty to 12 charges of rape and one of indecent assault in relation to the second woman and not guilty to 19 charges of indecent assault on dates between January 1, 1969 and June 30, 1973 when a male complainant was aged between 13 and 17 years old.

The girls were aged between 13 and 16 years old at the time.

Both women refused to accept a suggestion from Mr Giollaíosa O’Lideadha SC, defending, that the allegations were false and they had been asked by the male complainant to make them in order to get money out of the accused and force him out of his company.

The older woman told Mr McGrath that she met the accused through her local church when she was 11 or 12 years old. She said her initial impression of him was that he was a “very nice man” but then things changed.

“Everything you said, he had a double meaning for it and he was always, always talking about sex,” the woman said.

She said he brought her back to his office one day after mass after offering her a lift home. He then forced her to perform oral sex on him before he had sex with her.

The woman told the jury that she tried to get away from the man when he forced her to perform oral sex but he had his hands on the back of her head and she felt she was going to choke.

She said she did not agree to sexual intercourse with him. Afterwards he told her not to tell anyone. She said she was bleeding and sore.

She avoided that particular Mass for over a month but when she returned he again offered her a lift home.

She said the man did not accept her immediate refusal and told her he would tell her parents and other people what had happened if she did not get into the car.

“I was afraid what my parents and other people would think of me, that I was not a very nice person,” the woman told the jury before she said she got into the car and was again brought to his office where he raped her.

She said the abuse continued, not every week but always after 11.30 am Sunday mass, until the day she told him she was pregnant.

The younger complainant recalled being at his house alone with him when he showed her pornography featuring bestiality.

She claimed the accused then took her upstairs and had sex with her without her consent.

“This,” she recalled of the rapes, “happened once a month or once every six weeks.”

She said the accused made her perform oral sex on him while they were both in his car and he had told her to “keep what is happening between us” and that “no-one needs to know about it.”

She said the offences stopped in 1973 when she started to pal around with a different group of friends.

She recalled how later, the accused used to pull up in a car beside her and ask her to travel with him which she refused to do and recalled that he would say “Little apples will grow again” to her.

“I felt dirty, like a little tramp for allowing this to happen and I blamed myself,” she told Mr McGrath.

Under cross-examining by Mr O'Lideadha the woman denied that she made up allegations about pornography with women and animals.

“What I told you was the truth. I saw pornography and he showed it to me,” said the woman.

The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of seven women and five men.