Jury had to decide between two different stories of a boy’s life

The boy lived in “a kind of child’s paradise” according to his father’s defence counsel. He had slides, go-karts and many other toys that would make other six-year-olds jealous. His parents brought him on daily bike rides and on holidays around the country. His father didn’t work, but had won a significant amount of money on a TV game show. He wanted for nothing.

There were some causes for concern. Social workers were already involved in the care of the child, although the trial never heard the reason for this. He would frequently come to school in tears after fighting with his father. His mother had other children who were all in care. The defence admitted it was no “little house on the prairie”, but insisted it was “a home of love, affection and care”.

For the last seven weeks in Court 13 of the Criminal Courts of Justice, a jury has heard a very different story.

From a room in the Old Bailey in London the child spent nearly 10 days outlining what one experienced lawyer called the worst allegations he has heard in an Irish courtroom. The boy's testimony was streamed live on to television screens dotted around the courtroom.

The child took proceedings in his stride. He was keen to get on with the case and refused the regular breaks that were offered to him. He rarely became emotional; the only time he became truly upset was when a loud beeping noise interrupted his testimony.

“What the hell is that noise?” he asked.

"I'm very sorry, that's actually my phone," a sheepish Mr Justice Robert Eagar answered.

Each day of testimony brought increasingly shocking allegations. His father raped him. His father used a poker on him. His father made him have sex with his mother. His father filmed it and showed it to others.

Sometimes, the evidence seemed far-fetched, such as when the boy said his father owned “50 guns”, including a rocket launcher and an AK47. Gardaí­ found no weapons in the house.

‘Brainwashed’

The child’s father claimed social workers had brainwashed the boy into making the allegations. He accepted he could lose his temper and shout at the boy and even admitted he had beaten up a social worker who had annoyed him. But he and his partner denied any sexual abuse.

Their case was helped by the lack of corroborative evidence. As Mr Justice Eagar said, sexual abuse by its nature takes place in private, so witnesses are rare and the law takes a dim view of cases without corroborating evidence. The jury could convict, he said, but they must treat the child’s evidence with extra care.

The prosecution also had no physical evidence of abuse. Gardaí didn’t find a poker; the house didn’t even have a fireplace, and a medical examination found no injuries to the child which could have been caused by sexual abuse.

Instead, the DPP attempted to indirectly prove the child’s credibility.

Gardaí did find a video camera and evidence that pornography was viewed in the house. This matched the child’s evidence. The boy told the court his father crashed his car several times. This was backed up by crash reports uncovered by investigators.

The prosecution had other obstacles to overcome.

A social worker had failed to tell gardaí for a year that the boy had retracted the allegations in 2015 (he later restated that the abuse did happen). This was used by the defence to suggest social workers were determined to get a conviction at any cost.

Furthermore, during a Garda interview, detectives had been highly abusive towards the mother. “You look like a f**king 60-year-old,” one garda told her. “Look at the state of you, have you looked in the mirror?”

However, if there were concerns, they were overcome and, after seven hours, jurors convicted the father of nine counts of rape and one of cruelty.

Following another 90-minute deliberation, they convicted the mother of cruelty – essentially that she allowed the abuse by her partner to take place.

Neither parent showed much emotion during the trial. Their faces remained expressionless as the verdicts came in.