A 50-YEAR-OLD man has pleaded guilty to a litany of charges of rape and abuse of four of his daughters over an 18-year period.
A series of offences by the man outlined before the Central Criminal Court in Castlebar, Co Mayo, yesterday included raping one daughter after she had been tied with wire to a tree and tying her another time to a horse which was whipped and which then fell on top of her.
Whips, harnesses, poles, a frying pan and other implements were used in repeated beatings of the girls, and evidence was given that rapes began when the girls were as young as five and six years old.
One girl was raped on the bonnet of a car and she also told of having a vicegrip locked onto her ears, lips and nose.
Her arm was cut with a knife and the wound was sewn up with thread and without painkillers and subsequently became infected.
There was little or no medical treatment sought for the girls after repeated assaults and rapes.
The violence occurred in front of other siblings.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had initially pleaded not guilty to 271 charges of rape and assault over an 18-year period between 1991 and 2009. However, he changed his plea last week to guilty and was rearraigned on 14 sample charges.
The public was not admitted to yesterday’s hearing, where the accused sat impassively while evidence was given.
Three members of his family sat together at the back of the courtroom, but one left in a distressed state during the delivery of victim impact statements.
The man is to be sentenced by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court in Castlebar today.
A female garda told the court that the accused, a member of the Traveller community, had lived with his family in very remote, isolated and rural locations.
The abuse had come to light on March 24th, 2009, when two men called to a Garda station expressing concern.
Initially victims said there was no wrongdoing, but the garda made further inquiries and called to see one of the women when she attempted suicide in April 2009.
As a result of subsequent investigations, the witness said, an emergency care order was issued in respect of children on June 3rd, 2009.
In statements given to the gardaí which were quoted before the court, one of the daughters said the abuse started when she was five to seven years old and continued until she was 18 and left home. When she was nine, she was tied to a tree in the woods with wire, raped and had a sock put in her mouth. She bled heavily afterwards and lost the power of her legs.
A second daughter, now also in her 20s, told gardaí she had been raped until she was 13. Her father had “tried to make us think it was a normal life” when it was not.
The father would switch from one child to the other. He did not care if the others were watching, she said.
She continued: “I think about it every day in my life what he did. I was told: ‘If you say anything you are dead. Not matter how long I get I will hunt you down and I will kill you.’”
A third daughter said she has been abused from age nine to 20. She described how she was also tied to a tree and raped and her brother was forced to stay and watch. They were beaten with poles, hammers, sticks, harnesses and horse whips.
The court heard the accused had been arrested on June 3rd and July 7th, 2009, and denied all wrongdoing. He had 87 previous convictions, mostly relating to the abuse of an elder daughter for which he had been sentenced to 14 years in prison last year. Medical evidence showed he had fathered two children by her.
In three victim impact statements read to the court, one daughter described her father as “an animal that destroyed me”.
Another daughter described how her father would take her into the woods “the way no one would hear you scream”.
She said that she could not read or write and the only reason she was alive today was because of her children, who “give me some hope that things might be better in the future”.