Patrick O’Brien raped his daughter for 10 years — why is he not in jail?
O’Brien, aged 72, of Old Court Avenue, in Bray, has been described by his daughter Fiona Doyle, who he systematically raped for 10 years, as a “demon” and “the devil”. It’s not hard to see why.
The abuse began when O’Brien raped his daughter, then 7, the night before her First Holy Communion.
Other children, before such an auspicious event, lie awake at night due to nervous excitement. Ms Doyle, in contrast, was unable to sleep because she was so racked with pain after the vicious assault.
It didn’t stop there. For 10 unimaginably depraved years, O’Brien continued raping his daughter. It was, she said, “as frequent as eating dinner” and she became so accustomed to it that she would position herself so she could continue to watch television as he raped her.
Her mother, according to Ms Doyle, knew about the abuse but instead of protecting her daughter beat her and, from the age of 8, called her a “whore”. Perversely, Ms Doyle was cast as the “other woman” in a dysfunctional and “evil marriage”.
The child’s life was a living hell, especially when the rest of the family moved to the UK, but she was left behind with her father and moved into his bedroom so he could rape her “whenever it suited him”.
When she was 12 she spent three days in hospital receiving treatment for anal warts, begging the question why doctors didn’t report suspected child abuse to social services. Unsurprisingly, the abuse had a disastrous impact on Ms Doyle, whose first marriage broke down and who also attempted suicide on two occasions. She also vainly tried to treat her psychological injuries by altering her physical appearance and undergoing plastic surgery.
“I had many operations which I see now was a form of self-mutilation. I have the many scars to prove it,” she said.
O’Brien, who pleaded guilty last week to 16 counts of rape and indecent assault between 1973 and 1982, when first questioned by gardaí, denied the charges. He later admitted it, saying “it became normal”.
Raping a child and then, the next morning, helping her to dress in white and sitting in a church as she makes her First Holy Communion may have seemed normal in his sick, twisted mind, but it clearly isn’t. It’s the very antithesis of normal.
Judge Paul Carney recognised this. He said the crimes were “heinous”, that it was one of the worst cases of abuse he had ever presided over and the offences were at the top end of the scale. Yet, despite being labelled as of one of the worst child abusers to ever come before the courts, O’Brien is still walking around today, having been given bail after Judge Carney sentenced him to 12 years, suspended nine of those years and then decided the matter should go to the Court of Criminal Appeal.
It beggars belief. For a start, it seems incredible to grant a man who has confessed to the most vile sexual crimes and breaches of trust bail while he plans his appeal. It’s also, considering the litany of appalling offences over such a sustained period of time, bizarre to think that O’Brien would have any grounds to appeal the severity of a three-year term.
Regrettably, it appears that Ms Doyle, who has been understandably devastated by the judgment, is collateral damage in a spat between the High Court and CCA when it comes to sentencing infirm, elderly perverts.
Judge Carney, in his ruling, made pointed reference to a previous sentence he imposed a number of years ago, on another old man, which was suspended by the higher court, which has precedential power, in 2008. However, that case involved a case of sexual assault, a lesser offence than the rape charges that O’Brien pleaded guilty to.
In that case, the defendant was sentenced to nine months in prison after he pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault, whereby he exposed himself to his niece and, on a separate occasion, fondled her while she lay in bed.
Opting to suspend that sentence, the CCA said it was to the extent that Judge Carney had “given insufficient weight to the illnesses and declining health of this very old man that it can be said there was an error of principle in this case”.
That judgement noted the CCA has ruled that “a sentence imposed on a man in his 70s will occupy a more significant portion of his life than a sentence imposed in circumstances where the offences been reported immediately” and that judges must be cognisant of that when sentencing. Now, I’m not a legal expert, but it seems to me that the range of offences that O’Brien pleaded guilty to are on a completely different scale to those in the 2008 case and that, in suspending nine years of a 12-year-sentence, Judge Carney has already more than compensated for O’Brien’s age and medical condition.
IT ALSO seems odd to me, although it is uncontroversial in court cases, that defendants who have never shown an ounce of remorse for ruining the lives of their victims can utter a self-serving sorry upon conviction and expect to be rewarded with a reduced sentence.
Judge Carney, although he said the primary mitigating factor was O’Brien’s ill health, said he also took his remorse into account, but Ms Doyle, speaking on Monday, said her father had never once apologised to her: “No, never. He never said sorry. Neither of them did. And my mother should be in that dock with him. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”
While courts seem to bend over backwards to make allowances for defendants, many would argue that the same level of care is not shown to victims. O’Brien’s illness, age, history of employment and, most bizarrely, his good behaviour, shaved a full nine years off his custodial sentence, but the horror that was Ms Doyle’s childhood, and which extended long into her adult life, has only been deemed to be worth three years behind bars. Courts do not only have the function of punishing crimes on behalf of one victim but for society at large, and imposing unduly lenient sentences on degenerate criminals does not advance that function.
Sentences, it should be remembered, are supposed to deter others from committing similarly heinous crimes but I’m not sure that many child rapists, if given impunity to rape and abuse for 10 years, would be in any way deterred by the prospect of serving three years in jail, with time off for good behaviour.
O’Brien will undoubtedly eventually spend some time behind bars, but it appears to me that the only effective deterrent in his sentence will be its power to deter more victims of sexual violence, which is endemic in this country, from coming forward.
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