Woman raped by uncle as a child awarded €200,000

A High Court judge has awarded €200,000 damages to a young woman who alleged her uncle raped and sexually assaulted her on two occasions when she was a child.

Ms Justice Bronagh O’Hanlon found, on the balance of probabilities, the uncle raped his niece when she was aged six and digitally penetrated, and orally raped her, when she was aged 13.

The woman suffered severe personal injuries and loss and damage, the incidents were “extremely serious” and had “horrific consequences” for her, overhanging her life and posing real difficulties for her attempts to live and achieve a normal life, she found. Now aged 30, the woman brought a civil action for damages against her uncle over the incidents in 1994 and 2002.

He denied her claims and contended they were part of a pattern of defamatory and malicious falsehoods in an effort to do him harm and extract money from him.

Ms Justice O’Hanlon concluded the woman, represented by David McGrath SC, was entitled to €200,000 damages plus costs. She accepted the woman’s version of events and found the defendant lacked credibility.

Sleepover

The woman had said the first incident occurred when she was aged six and having a sleepover at her uncle’s house. She was in a sleeping bag which was not closed and woke to find it had been pulled back across her, her underwear was at her calves and her uncle was on top of her, she said.

Her evidence was he forced his hand and later his penis inside her, she did not remember more and thinks she may have passed out. She did not talk to anyone in the aftermath of that and was “terrified”.

She said the second incident occurred when she was aged 13 and lying down with a pain in her stomach in a bedroom in her uncle’s house. She said he came into the room, shut the door, pinned her down on the bed and forced his penis into her mouth. She said she couldn’t breathe, believed she passed out and when she came to, he was gone.

Second incident

She said she told her parents in 2007 about that second incident and only in early 2008 remembered the first incident. She told her mother of that and reported it to gardaí in late 2008.

The judge described as “convincing” evidence from the plaintiff’s brother that he, then aged eight, had walked into a bedroom in his uncle’s house, briefly saw his uncle with his penis in his sister’s mouth, left and shut the door. The brother also said his uncle approached him shortly afterwards, punched him in the stomach and warned him not to tell anyone what he saw.