Battling for justice for the rape of your child

Wed, 13 Mar, 2024 - 01:00

Cormac O’Keeffe, Security Correspondent

Jane* has few photographs up in her home anymore. There was a time when her house was full of them. But, now, they would be a constant reminder of the “before and after”.

The “before” was the normal, happy, innocent world of children, smiling and messing; a time of good memories and a lifetime ahead of more.

The “after” was the arrival of a man into her life and the sickening violence he inflicted on her son and the inescapable trauma he left behind.

“The abuse of my son began very young,” Jane said, speaking from her home in Leinster. “I know this because I love taking photos; there’s no photos now. That’s because the before and after tells an awful story.

“Pictures [from before] show him laughing or running through water and the expression is one full of life and happiness.

Then there are pictures from [a certain point after] and I can’t look at them anymore, because of the deadness in the eyes. You can see it in his eyes. It’s dead. That life, that light, is gone.

“So I cannot have the photos, like other families do, because I can see, I can see what’s happened. It’s very difficult to be reminded of what has happened. And it happened because of the decisions I made.”

Vulnerable

Jane, a single mother, said she was vulnerable when she met the perpetrator.

She and her three children were leaving a controlling situation in a religious community and during this process, which was in 2011, she had started going to a local sports club.

There, she met a coach and started training.

“At the beginning, he was very professional, very sport-oriented. It was all about the training,” she said.

“He had coached me for a couple of months before he made any advances on me and I’ll never forget the time when he did make that advance. He had said to the head coach at the time about giving me extra lessons and he got permission.

“So I turned up and he was there and he was coaching me and in the middle of a session he took my hand and he walked me across the floor. It kind of took me by surprise because it was the opposite to what I was supposed to be there for.”

She said that, slowly, they became close.

Soon after, she brought her children to the sports club: “At the beginning, it was only me, but then I brought my children and he started to coach them as well.”

‘I trusted him’

Initially, he was “very kind” to all of them. “He was all about the kids,” she said. “He couldn’t do enough for them. And what got me at the time was that he had a sports car, he had an actual sports car, and he changed that for a family car. So I kind of thought, he’s serious, he’s genuine, he’s making an effort.

“I could see evidence that this guy was actually going to be a family man. This was a little bit on in the relationship.”

By this stage, he had gained access to the family home.

“The boys would have been sitting on his knee,” Jane said. “We would have looked at movies together. We’d have done stuff families would have done. And so then, of course, my family liked him. My friends thought I was lucky. You know, he’s such a good man. So everything seemed to be OK. And I suppose I’m the mother, aren’t I? It shouldn’t have happened.”

She said she now knows how it happened: “I trusted him. I was vulnerable. I was looking for help. I was replacing a religion with somebody that, to me, presented an opportunity to give me and my kids a normal family life. That’s what I only ever wanted.”

The man told her she had talent, but that she needed to train hard. While she trained, he often babysat, typically at weekends and school holidays.

Dark turn

Things took a darker turn when her now partner suggested moving into a new home, outside the town, deeper in the countryside.

At the time, Jane felt it was a great idea: “We were in our first home [in town] and then he thought it would be a great idea if we moved from a housing estate into the country.

“It was a fabulous house. I came from the country. So the country life is what I would appreciate. And [we talked about] ‘it’s easier to rear children in the country, all the influences from the town life, it’s much better’.

“So I went along with it, I was quite happy to go along with it. I felt it was a benefit. And of course I was more isolated.”

And with this, the rape and violation intensified.

While uncertainties about her partner did stray into her mind occasionally, Jane said she did not trust these thoughts: “The thing when you’re vulnerable, you do not trust yourself. When you’re a vulnerable mother and you’re trying your best to be what your children need, and you’re just not able to give it and you try so hard.

"And you get these feelings and because it was so alien to the way I would feel about people — I’m a people’s person, I like people — I would never in my wildest dreams have believed that somebody could have been capable of behaving like this.

“I had feelings and I said: ‘Jane, don’t be thinking like that. That’s not right. That’s not normal. That’s wrong'.”

Last month, on the day of the victim impact statements — one from Jane and one from her son — a court heard from gardaí that her partner used “coercive methods” to rape.

He had bought the boy a PlayStation as an “allurement” and as a way of “rewarding” him. He sometimes plied the boy with alcohol.

A local garda told the court that the man carried out the rapes in a total of 11 different locations, including the family home, vehicles, and a boat.

In his victim impact statement, Jane’s son said that before the abuse started he had a lot of friends in primary school, but that after it started he found it difficult to take part in school activities, was anxious, got bullied, and struggled with rage and shame.

Mental toll

Jane said her son was “very disturbed” throughout secondary school.

“He went from being a perfectly happy, popular child to getting into trouble at school and fighting with the teachers. He was just very troubled. Because of what this man had done to him.”

Her son had to move school and she took her children and moved to another county.

Her partner followed.

“There is abuse in this house,” she said, speaking to the Irish Examiner in the sitting room of the rented home. “He raped my son here.”

She said her son’s behaviour deteriorated. She walked up the stairs to the landing. “He was extremely angry, he damaged and punched walls and doors in our home,” she said, pointing to the door of the hot press, which has cracks and holes on both sides of the door.

Jane said that her son’s mental health suffered terribly and that one day she came home to find him about to take his own life: “I found him with cable ties — he was going to hang himself, because he couldn’t cope with life.”

She said her son had so much going for him and that he had even managed to compete at national level in his sport. But even that too was robbed from him. “He just couldn’t train and he couldn’t understand, because he was hyperventilating,” she said. “It was just having people so near him.”

Disclosure

Her son was 16 when he eventually summoned up the courage to disclose to his mum.

My poor son, you didn’t ask for that. He only asked to be, you know, to be cared for, to be loved, to be given an education and be given opportunities in life. The very individual that was part of that whole process took all that and used it to destroy him.”

They decided to go to the police.

“We dealt with [a local sergeant] and he heard our story,” Jane said. “He was very kind and very professional and he cared for the individual behind the assault. So that was my experience. We are forever indebted to this man and a lot, also, to [a garda], the police lady. Another fantastic individual. It wasn’t just a job to them. They did their job but they were also able to mind us and care for us.”

After the disclosures, forensic examinations were carried out: “Tests for Aids had to be done, that was very frightening. They examined for fissures in anal passages — that is not normal.”

Five years ago, she said they started their therapeutic journey with St Louise’s Unit at Crumlin Hospital (now The Alders Unit based at Tallaght Hospital), which specialises in helping child victims of sexual abuse as well as their parents and siblings.

“The therapists there do such a fantastic job in supporting families going through these horrendous experiences and traumas,” Jane said. “And my son would have had his therapist, who has gone beyond the beyond for him.”

She said this unit provided a “constant, consistent therapist from day one to the current day” which she said is so important.

Bias against victims

With the help of therapists and the gardaí, her son was eventually able to detail the abuse.

“My son was able to detail the sexual offences over the many years,” she said. “He raped my child and made him perform sexual acts. He made my child do all sorts of things. But my son was brave enough to come forward. My son was brave enough to get justice.”

However, the legal system, according to Jane, did not make it easy for them, as victims.

“You are trying to deal with trauma, and you are then having to step into an area that you’re so unfamiliar with, all the legal issues,” she said. “It is extremely retraumatising because you’re reliant on people to tell you things. And the problem is that I had nowhere to go. I didn’t know who to ask. And that again layered another area of stress and trauma, lying awake at night thinking ‘you’re involved in a space that you’re so alien to, that you have no answers’.”

At the same time, she said, “your child is struggling and suffering and you, as a parent, can barely function.”

This is where having a State-appointed solicitor to assist would be a great help, she said.

“Having your legal team that you could make a phone call to, I think that is very important for parents, or for victims.

“There should be a provision for this where the likes of myself, a mother of children, in this case a child who has been raped. And remember from a mother’s point of view, she’s failed. She’s let them down. And she now must work very, very hard to pull back what she can for her children. And she can’t do that if she doesn’t have the knowledge. So having that legal support, that advocacy is very important.”

Jane said that from the beginning she was told she did not need her own solicitor as, per the system, the case was being prosecuted by the State, the DPP.

She was also told that she should not discuss the abuse with her son as it could be seen as “coaching” a witness.

Throughout her experience, the biggest issue she said was the difference in how victims are treated compared to the accused, or if they plead guilty, the perpetrator.

“In the legal system, regardless for whatever reason, the perpetrator becomes very, very protected at the expense of the victim,” she said.

One area that hit her and her son deeply was the right of the defence to see his therapy notes.

Jane said: “If I go to a therapist to disclose my trauma, trauma that possibly nobody in my life ever heard and I’ve barely even spoken to myself about, but I feel it’s killing me inside and I need to do something, and I disclose everything about that rape and I want to gain justice, my therapy notes need to be released to the judge and the defence team.

The defence can look through all my private notes and my greatest fears and they will examine them and construct an argument based on those very private therapy notes to argue against me and it will be done in an open court. There is something fundamentally very wrong about that.”

She said she signed for her son’s notes to be handed over: “It was horrendous, horrendous, and that should change, because they are private.”

(A new system was brought in a few years ago where a disclosure hearing can be held to determine whether or not therapy notes are supplied to the defence, but the actual use of this process depends on victims being informed about it and their willingness to accept the delays in proceedings it involves.)

Her ex-partner, according to local gardaí, “strongly denied the allegations” when he was arrested and questioned in April 2021.

He was subsequently charged on a total of 87 counts.

Last November, as the trial approached at the Central Criminal Court, he entered a guilty plea to 27 sample charges of rape and sexual assault between 2015 and 2019, when the boy was aged between 10 and 14.

“They told us that he was going to jail, that he’s giving a guilty plea,” Jane said. “We were told there and then that if you accept that he’s going to jail. My son didn’t know what to do. He had to make a decision and it all happened so fast. That itself is trauma, another layer of trauma.”

He accepted and, afterwards, they celebrated that at least his tormentor would be going to jail.

“The next day we rolled up, the sentencing was going to be had and suddenly there seemed to be an issue of bail,” Jane said.

He got bail and sentencing was put off for three months, she said, to enable the defendant to organise care for his elderly mother.

“My son was very upset,” Jane said. “He had pleaded guilty but he was allowed to walk free for three months after we were told he was going straight to jail. That really, really upset my son because we were celebrating. That was more trauma.”

She said his therapist came to his aid: “She finished work in Tallaght and made her way [to his home] that evening, in the dark of night, to my son to make sure that he was going to be okay. She ensured she gave him time to talk, to process things. And when I knew that, he was going to be okay. She did that.”

Victim statements

On February 12, he and his mother were set to give their victim impact statements and counsel to give their closing statements.

The defendant, aged 51, sat impassively throughout, showing little reaction to the heart-breaking victim impact statements.

Jane’s son was present through video-link from another place in the Criminal Courts of Justice.

He spoke clearly and movingly of the impact the long years of abuse had on him.

He told Ms Justice Caroline Biggs that he was “very hypervigilant”. He could not wear earphones out and was “always looking over his shoulder” and that certain smells or sight of jeeps [his attacker had one] could trigger memories of abuse.

He said he still had difficulties with his bowels and that he still had blood in his stools. He said that when he bleeds he feels pain “through the day”.

He said he has a “lot of anger” towards paedophiles and wanted to hurt them.

“It hurts me to think that he is breathing the same air as me and that his heart is still beating,” he said. “My childhood and my youth was taken away from me. This is a life sentence for me.”

He interjected when defence counsel John Shortt said his client wanted to express his remorse, saying “it’s too late now”.

He visibly baulked and shook his head when Mr Shortt said his client hoped he would in time develop an understanding and engagement with him.

In her statement, Jane said happiness abandoned her family: “It’s like cancer which has grown its roots right through me.”

Mr Shortt informed the court that a psychological report on his client found that there was an “above average risk of re-offending, because of a lack of insight” into his actions.

The teenager had to listen to remarks from the two barristers and the judge about the possible sentences, with Conor Devally, prosecuting, suggesting the middle-to-upper range of the 10-15 year bracket.

Guilty plea

The victim shook his head when Ms Justice Biggs, who had earlier commended his bravery in making his statement, said the guilty plea and the expression of remorse “will reduce the overall sentence”.

The judge remanded the defendant in custody pending sentencing on March 11.

Jane, exhausted and strained, stood up and watched the defendant being taken away, for the first time, by prison officers down to the holding cells and onward to Mountjoy Prison.

“It was very important to me that I saw him being taken away and that he was going to prison.”

One of her biggest complaints about the legal system is the impact of a guilty plea and the influence it gives the perpetrator over the final sentence.

“When a perpetrator pleads guilty they now have an opportunity to have a say in how their sentence is played out. They shouldn’t have that control, they shouldn’t be given that right.

“They are there for a reason — because they have done wrong. They give a guilty plea and automatically they get a reduced sentence. That adds more trauma.”

She said this was even more so on hearing his psychiatric report saying he was above average risk of reoffending due a lack of insight into the impact of his rapes.

“He’s a very dangerous man,” Jane said.

She said the number one priority of the court is to avoid an appeal. “Everything is about making sure an appeal doesn’t happen,” she said. “And the issue with that is it’s very much at the expense of the victim. So the victim is not seen in this, my son’s trauma, my son’s pain, the rest of his life lost because of years and years of rape.”

Sentencing

When it came to the day for sentencing, on Monday, Jane was anxious beforehand and feared the sentence, if low, would be an additional blow to both herself and her son.

Inside the court, her son, again, joined on video-link.

His tormentor sat largely expressionless throughout.

Ms Justice Biggs said the defendant had engaged in “habitual” rape and sexual assault of the boy and that the impact of this abuse was “horrendous”.

She said he “manipulated and controlled” the boy, firstly, through allurements and rewards, such as buying him a PlayStation, and, secondly, by threats, telling him no one would believe him if he told anyone and it would only hurt his own family.

The judge said it was “evident” from the victim impact statement that the boy suffered “emotional torment and years of anguish”.

She praised him for being able to write such “profound words”.

Addressing him directly, she said: “You are an incredibly strong human being. What was done to you was unspeakable.”

She said he had much to offer the world.

The judge said the abuse was aggravated by the fact it was constant over four to five years and “depraved” in nature. She said the abuse happened when the child was at a young age and in a vulnerable period during puberty. In addition, there was a “significant breach of trust” in his relationship with the boy’s mother, a single mother.

She took into account mitigation factors, such as the defendant’s plea of guilty, though she noted this came “quite late” in the day, and his expression of
remorse. She noted from psychological and probation service
reports that the defendant had a “very limited insight” into his crimes and was at a “high or well above average” risk of reoffending, but acknowledged his stated willingness to engage in therapy and rehabilitation.

Ten years

Ms Justice Biggs said the impact of the abuse “can’t be quantified”. She took the maximum sentence of 15 years for the rape charges and applied a headline sentence of 14 and a half years.

She gave the defendant a 25% credit for his plea and his expression of remorse, reducing the sentence to 10 years and nine months.

She suspended the final nine months for two years on strict condition he engage with rehabilitation, with a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for sexual assault offences to run concurrently.

The judge directed five years of post-release supervision.

The defendant showed little reaction during sentencing.

Speaking afterwards, Jane said she was “grateful” that the judge applied a sentence at the top end of the range. However, she strongly believes the laws have to be changed to allow judges, who are actually conducting the proceedings, to give longer sentences if warranted, without the expectation the appeal courts will cut their sentences.

“Ten years and nine months will never be enough, but no sentence can ever equate to the harm done to my child,” Jane said.

“I believe the judge did the best she could, given she is bound by legal rules and the constraints of the system, but judges should be given more powers, as crimes of this nature, and criminals of this nature, this depravity, deserves heftier sentences.”

She thanked Ms Justice Biggs for the way she treated her son: “I found the judge’s comments to my son very kind, very reassuring, very motherly, but she kept her professionalism and she was very thorough, and I am grateful for that.”

Her son was “vindicated” by the sentence: “He was heard and he was believed. We can put down this heavy load that we have been carrying a long time.

“There is still a long recovery, but justice has been served and it will make it easier for my son to get on with his life.”

Epidemic

Jane said the pain will always be there:

We mourn the loss of the life we could have had, because we certainly will never have it. We will not know what it’s like, what it’s like to be untouched by paedophilia.

"We were denied childhood innocence, and that is so wrong, because that person will get out of jail at some point and just fall back into society.”

She said the personal toll was immense: “I will never recover. I don’t know happiness anymore, what it’s like to be excited. It’s all just anger. It’s like a cancer which has grown roots right through me. I can’t cry anymore. I shout and a noise comes out of my mouth that I don’t recognise.”

However, one thing she is determined to do is to talk, if only anonymously for now: “I would never have been aware of the epidemic of child sexual abuse that is out there until it came to my door, but there is an epidemic of child sexual abuse. Talking to our children about it doesn’t take away from their innocence — you are protecting them, because once something is done to them you can’t undo it.”

She said that having the conversation with children allows them to know what is wrong, because they won’t necessarily know themselves if someone violates their trust.

“My son didn’t know that, because he was too young,” she said. “We need to say to children if something does not feel right, it is okay to talk to someone.”

She called on people who have suffered sexual abuse, whether they are still a child or now an adult, to seek help and disclose to the gardaí, saying that she and her son were listened to and cared for.

“There was no sense of shame,” she said, “and shame is the thing that keeps us in our place.”