A CO Westmeath woman has told the Central Criminal Court that she watched her three-year-old sister being raped by her father as there was nothing she could do to stop it because she was afraid.
The woman, who alleges her father also raped and sexually abused her from when she was five, said when she saw her father coming in drunk and undoing his belt that day, she picked up her little sister and put her arms around her to protect her.
Her father pulled her sister from her, laid two cushions on the floor and raped the three-year-old.
The woman who was five years old at the time said she remembered her sister crying and looking back up at her but there was nothing she could do because she was scared.
The now 22-year-old woman said her father then called her over and raped her.
The 44-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty to a total of 35 charges of sexual assault, oral rape, anal rape and rape relating to his two daughters and younger brother-in-law on dates between December 1st, 1991 and June 1999.
The children were aged between three and 15 at the time.
The complainant told Alexander Owens SC, prosecuting, that the first time her father raped her she had walked into the sitting room in their home to discover him raping her uncle, who was then 15 years old.
She wanted to leave but her father made her stay and while the teenager was crying in the corner her father then raped her.
She denied a suggestion by Conor Devally SC, defending, that incidents she described to the jury did not happen although she may have experienced violence and neglect. She also rejected a suggestion that she had told another girl that her mother’s partner had got her pregnant as a teenager and her mother had beaten her and she had a miscarriage.
She further denied that she had encouraged her “sister and uncle to come forward” and didn’t accept that she had discussed the abuse with them. She didn’t accept a suggestion that she enlisted her sister’s and uncle’s assistance and looked to them for help.
The accused’s younger daughter told the jury that her father would do things to both her and her sister “that a father should never do to his children”.
The male victim told Mr Owens he was raped by the accused one night after he made him watch a sex tape.
He told the jury that it “was only out of embarrassment” that he never mentioned how the accused had raped him.
The hearing continues before Mr Justice Daniel Herbert and a jury of seven men and five women.