A 16-YEAR-OLD girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather in their Galway home for four years told a court yesterday that she used to dream the man was a serpent coming towards her.
Her 47-year-old stepfather was sentenced to seven years in prison yesterday by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy after he pleaded guilty to seven charges of sexual assault on dates between June 2005 and April 2009.
The charges represented a sample of 54 offences.
The girl, who was giving her victim impact statement at the man’s sentence hearing in the Central Criminal Court, said she would dream she was standing in a cornfield, she could not move and there was a snake coming towards her.
“The snake is him. He comes right up to me. I can see my reflection in his eyes and then I wake up,” the teenager told the court.
The girl turned to face her stepfather as she read the last few paragraphs of her victim impact statement and said: “I was your prisoner. I had no means of escape. You tore my family apart but I am not your prisoner any more. You made me a victim but I am not a victim any more, I am a survivor.
“I am going to leave school, go to college, get married, travel the world and help other people who are victims of sexual abuse,” the teenager told the accused.
The girl told Deirdre Murphy, prosecuting, that she now realises she is away from her stepfather “and I know his clammy hands won’t fumble across my body in places it should not”.
The judge said the offences were a “grave breach of trust” on a vulnerable person. He noted the man had exploited the opportunity he had as the person responsible for the care of the children.
Mr Justice McCarthy also took into account the man’s plea of guilty to the offences.
Garda Tomasina McHale told Ms Murphy that the teenager had been sexually abused by the man for four years, “in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening and in the night”.