A YOUNGER sister of a 21-year-old woman accusing her father of repeated rape and physical abuse said she saw her dad scald her older sister by “smashing a kettle of boiling water over her”.
Giving evidence by video link on day four of the trial, the now 12-year-old girl said her dad got mad at her older sister as she “forgot the mushrooms or something” for dinner.
She claims her older sister was making her dad a cup of tea when he grabbed the kettle and threw it at her sister, causing a cut to her head and scalding her upper body.
“My sister ran upstairs to the bath and dad followed her and put bandages on the wounds and said sorry to her,” the girl told Aileen Donnelly SC, prosecuting, in the Central Criminal Court.
Defence counsel John Peart SC put it to the 12-year-old that she and her younger sister were “messing in the kitchen, and she had pushed her older sister who had the kettle in her hand, causing it to spill on to herself.”
The 12-year-old said she and her younger sister were watching television when her father had got mad at her older sister and poured the boiling water over her.
The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty to 41 counts of anal rape, 41 counts of oral rape and 24 counts of sexual assault at various addresses between July 1996 and March 2006.
He further pleaded not guilty to assaulting the girl causing her harm by striking her with a knife, striking her with a hatchet, by burning a cigarette into her back, and kicking her between August 2003 and April 2004. He also denied two counts of intentionally or recklessly causing the girl serious harm by smashing an ashtray and forcing her to kneel on broken glass and by scalding her with water from a kettle between August 2003 and April 2004.
He further denied two counts of making threats to kill or cause serious harm to the girl on dates between November 2006 and September 2007.
Dr Philip O’Connell said the complainant visited his clinic in 2004 with “extensive blistering and redness” on her upper body.
He said the patient would not tell him the source of her injuries but he believed they were “unlikely” to have been self-inflicted since she is right handed and some of the blisters were on the inside of that arm. The scars from these burns were “permanent and extensive” on her chest and both her arms.
The trial continues.