Man jailed for 'depraved' sexual abuse of brothers

A reformed alcoholic who carried out regular, “depraved and outrageous” sexual assaults on two brothers who had “adopted him as their father” has been jailed for four and half years.

The 66-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identities of his victims, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 10 counts of indecent assault in the boys' Dublin home on dates between July 1983 and May 1987.

The boys were aged 13 and six years old when the abuse first started.

The court heard that the boys’ father died when they were still quite young and the man started a relationship with their mother a number of years later.

He moved into the family home and the younger victim later told gardaí he actually thought the defendant was his father until his sister told him otherwise when he was nine years old.

His brother commented that he looked up to the man because he had always wanted a father.

Judge Martin Nolan said the abuse had started almost immediately after the man moved into their home.

He described the incidents as “serious and extremely sordid” and said the man had taken advantage of the children who had adopted him as their father.

Judge Nolan said the man had greatly abused the boys’ trust and what they suffered as a consequence was “reasonable and foreseeable” and to their abuser’s “eternal discredit”.

“The boys looked up to you as their father and it has left them with scars for the rest of their lives. What you did will never leave them,” Judge Nolan said before he described the sexual assaults as “depraved and outrageous”.

He accepted that because the man has no previous convictions, he was not a threat to society and acknowledged he now leads “a lonely life” but said this was his own fault.

Garda Paul Flood told Gerardine Small BL, prosecuting, the older brother was abused after the man insisted on taking a bath with him to conserve water.

The younger victim reported that the man would call him in from playing outside when he was six years old. He then sexually assaulted him after ordering him to take down his trousers and underwear.

The man told his victim what he had done to him was “OK” because he was his father. He also gave the child vodka to drink from the cap of a bottle.

Gda Flood said the man made a voluntarily statement to the gardaí after the abuse was reported.

He claimed he could not remember abusing the boys because he had both a drink and a drug problem at the time but told gardaí the victims were not liars and accepted the allegations “could be true”.

Victim impact reports were handed into court but not read out. The man was registered as a sex offender.

Gda Flood agreed with Gerry O’Brien SC, defending, that he was aware that the man had “tried to harm himself” by taking a drug overdose because of his “shame and regret for his actions”.

Mr O’Brien told Judge Nolan his client acknowledges the “very great hurt he has caused” and is “very greatly ashamed for what he has done”.

He said the man had been an alcoholic from the ages of 15 to 50 but has been attending Alcoholics Anonymous for the last 16 years.