A Dublin man who raped and tortured his 14-year-old daughter and mutilated his wife with a saw blade has been jailed for 15 years by Mr Justice Finnegan at the Central Criminal Court.
The man chained the two women to a wall for several weeks and refused to allow them to go to the toilet or to take a shower. He slashed both their faces with razor blades, a screwdriver and a saw blade, leaving them scarred for life. He drove a spike through his wife's foot and stabbed both women with the spike on different dates. He also raped his daughter 24 times and forced her into oral sex.
The two women eventually escaped from the house and spent four days in hospital.
The 38-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to 10 sample charges of rape, false imprisonment and assault, causing harm. Mr Bruce Antoniotti SC, prosecuting, said that 44 other charges of rape, false imprisonment and assault, causing serious harm, had to be considered.
The man's guilty pleas came after a jury had been sworn in for his trial. He had initially pleaded not guilty to two charges of rape and false imprisonment. He admitted three charges of raping his daughter at their home in northwest Dublin.
He also admitted two charges of falsely imprisoning his wife and one of falsely imprisoning his daughter, and four further charges of causing them serious harm. The offences occurred on dates from November 1997 to January 1999.
Mr Antoniotti read from a statement by the man's wife in which she said her husband told her he had a "surprise" for her when she came home in July 1998 after a stay in a women's refuge. He led her to a bedroom and she thought he was going to give her a gift. But he pinned her on to a mattress and bound her hands and legs with chains. He then chained their 14-year-old daughter, who became hysterical.
He blocked out all light to the room by stapling blankets over the windows. He put masking tape around the door and left a bucket for use as a toilet.
The wife's statement described how the man ordered his son to bring him a metal spike he kept for punishment. He stabbed both victims with this. The wife and daughter were kept in the room for two weeks on the first occasion and were unable to change clothes. They were released after two weeks and told to tell the rest of the family that they had been in a women's shelter.
There were further bouts of similar torture during which they were mutilated and told they were going to be killed. The man ordered both women to tell him the names of men they had sex with behind his back. Both women made up names. "I picked a name from one of my schoolbooks", his daughter said in her statement to gardai.
The mother and daughter eventually escaped from the house with four younger children when the man and his son were sleeping. They crept out the kitchen window and walked for half a mile before calling the gardai.
The daughter told the court that she still suffered flashbacks and could not form a normal sexual relationship. She left the witness-box to show her facial scars to the judge. Her mother decided not to give evidence, but showed the judge her facial, back and leg scars.
Mr Michael Durack SC, defending, said a psychiatric report indicated that his client was suffering from paranoid psychosis, but it did not conclude that he was insane. He suffered from alcoholism and an obsessive and false belief that his wife and daughter were involved in prostitution. He was now in the Central Mental Hospital and apologised for the "extraordinary harm" he had caused.
Mr Durack said that the defendant still held the same disillusioned beliefs, but had, at least, admitted that he had committed the acts.
Mr Justice Finnegan said the paranoid psychosis was a very small mitigating factor for the "horrific" attacks on the man's wife, but it was not a mitigating factor for the opportunistic sexual attacks on his daughter. He had committed "horrific brutality" against his wife and the attacks on his daughter "excited considerable disgust and horror".