Man jailed for sexually assaulting family friend's four-year-old daughter

A man has been jailed for four years for the sexual assault of the four-year-old daughter of a family friend.

The 73-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the victim's anonymity, denied three counts of sexual assault on the child at locations in Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow some time between January 1985 and December 1987.

After a five-day trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last March a jury convicted him of all counts.

The victim was aged between four and six when the man forced her to touch his genitals in his family home and in her family home.

Today, judge Karen O'Connor imposed concurrent four-year sentences for each offence. She had set a headline sentence of six years which she reduced in consideration of his age and ill health.

She noted that as a result of the abuse the woman said she had her childhood innocence and her self-esteem stolen from her.

In a victim impact statement the victim, now an adult, said that the abuse left her feeling disgusted with her body. She said she was aged only eight when she tried to kill herself.

At his sentence hearing Mr Lynn said his client was terminally ill with incurable cancer. A medical report stated he was easily fatigued.

“The intensity of the prison experience for someone in extremely poor health would be extremely oppressive,” counsel submitted.

'I thought it was my fault'

In her statement the woman said she felt isolated and didn't know if what had happened to her was illegal. When she began to later read accounts from rape victims she felt guilt at the fact their experience seemed familiar because “I thought (what happened to me) was different, I thought it was my fault”.

She said she spent most of her life “hating every inch of me” and blaming a child for this.

During the trial she testified that at the time of the assaults she told a school friend but she didn't really understand what had being done to her.

When she disclosed the assaults to her mother the visits to the man's home were stopped but gardaí were not contacted. In later years the woman broke down in front of her father and he cried and said that her mother had told him that she was alright and that was why he had never talked to the victim about it.

The woman paid credit to her husband who had borne “a tremendous burden” for her and made her feel safe. She said she had felt suicidal in the past and thanked Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, saying “without them I would not be alive today”.

She said she found herself “grieving for a life I didn't get to live”.

Judge O'Connor said that the man's serious medical issue could be dealt with in custody but said she took it into consideration as a mitigating factor.

She noted that the woman had spent many years in counselling. She said the aggravating factors were the disparity in the age between the man and the child and his position of trust within her family.