‘Keep knocking on doors’: Survivor speaks out after abuser uncle jailed for 12 years

When Lisa was 17 years old, after years of torment, she first disclosed the abuse to her then boyfriend, who later gave evidence of this conversation during the trial. File picture

A survivor of prolonged sexual abuse has urged others who have been dismissed when reporting their experiences to persist, saying: “Keep knocking on doors — someone will hear you.”

Lisa Brown’s appeal came after her uncle, who repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted her over a number of years, was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment at the Central Criminal Court on Friday.

She said the path to seeing him jailed began decades earlier, when she was still a teenager trying to make sense of what had been done to her.

Michael Poole, of Bowbridge, Kilmainham, south Dublin, was convicted of a series of offences against Ms Brown dating from 1980 to 1988.

He had faced 49 counts of rape and sexual assault; he pleaded guilty to 27 counts of indecent assault but denied the rape charges.

A jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on the rape counts earlier this month.

When Lisa was 17 years old, after years of torment, she first disclosed the abuse to her then boyfriend, who later gave evidence of this conversation during the trial.

“I then told my mam” she explained “And she would not let him back into the house but didn’t tell my dad for months she was scared he would confront Michael and get into trouble.

“When she did tell him I was still 17 and he took me to the police station. There was only two attempts with the gardaí to get them to hear my story, one with my dad when I was 17 and the other was when my daughter was born in 2001”.

“I was just fobbed off and the gardaí told me there is nothing we can do for you. It was destroying soul.

“And now here I am and he’s going to jail for 12 years, I just want to say to people, it is so difficult to do this, but look at me today, I am getting through it and had a successful conviction, so I was listened to in the end and believed”.

She said the second attempt to report the abuse in 2001, after the birth of her child, became a “pivotal” moment.

“Looking at my baby, I was just overwhelmed by the fear that the man who had done this to me for years might harm someone else” said Lisa.

“I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘What if he does this to someone else?’” she said. “So I rang them (the gardaí) again.”

That call, she recalled, ended in another dismissal, which left her shattered.

“I was told, ‘I suggest you get on with your life.’ I have never forgot those words — they stuck in my head” she said.

For years afterwards, she did just that — or tried to. The abuse remained unspoken in any formal sense, carried instead in private.

“I had given up,” she said. “I didn’t know there was anything else I could do. People don’t realise but it is a long hard battle and you lose people along the way. Some people don’t want to believe it. You have to accept that even if it is sickening."

At the Central Criminal Court on Friday, Lisa, who waived her right to anonymity, listened to the sentencing hearing via video link as Poole was jailed for 12 years.

“I just couldn’t be there” she said. “I was all over the place for a long time, and coming up to this date, the sentence hearing, I was so rattled. It’s a horrible process even if you do win, it is not easy”.

In court, Mr Justice Patrick McGrath described the abuse as “horrific” and said it was carried out by a person in a position of trust. He also referred to an “appalling series” of rapes.

He also acknowledged earlier failures in Ms Brown’s case, noting she had been met with a “very cold response” when she first approached gardaí. He apologised on behalf of the system, which she said “meant a lot”.

“I tried so hard to be heard, but again I say, that has been accepted and that’s what I want other survivors to see, keep going and keep trying, even if you have to go to another garda station.

“If you don’t get satisfaction at your local station, you can go to another one and ask them to take the report”.

Friday’s sentence has brought a mixture of relief and exhaustion.

“I feel releived that I was believed and that justice has finally been done,” she said. “But I feel exhausted, I feel emotional getting to this point. I twas a very hard time”.

“The trial required me to revisit experiences I had spent years trying to contain” she said. “It was very overwhelming,” she said. “You have to go back through everything.”

But today, Lisa said she feels a sense of strength in having persisted.

“I feel like I’m strong now that I’ve got through this,” she said.

The court heard that much of the abuse took place in the family home, where she was warned as a child that her father would go to prison if she told anyone, a threat that kept her living in silence for years. When she did eventually speak, she encountered disbelief and, at times, isolation “from many people”.

Lisa said she wanted to speak publicly in the hope that others might recognise themselves in her story, particularly those who were turned away when they first tried to report abuse.

“There are supports out there now that people might not know about,” she said. “I didn’t know that I had given up after the second time.” 

“I want to say to other, dontt be afraid to come forward,” she said. “Even if you meet resistance, go again and go again.

“It just goes to show you should never give up. Keep knocking on doors, someone will hear you.” 

Mr Justice McGrath commended Ms Brown for her “strength and persistence” in pursuing the case, noting the central role of her evidence in securing the convictions.

“The sentence marks a significant moment for me, it’s not the end of what I lived with, but it is recogniation of it” she said.

“For me, it’s about being heard,” she said. “Now I feel like the truth has been recognised.”

Lisa said when the gardaí did “come on board”, which resulted in her uncle’s conviction, “they couldn’t have been more helpful” she said. “Really they were fantastic and I can’t thank them enough.”