A 57-YEAR-OLD labourer has been jailed for a year for sexually abusing his youngest sister several times a week between 1976 and 1982.
Judge Frank O’Donnell said in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that he had to have “due regard for the law” and suspended the final six months of Paddy Fitzgerald’s sentence. He described the effects outlined by Christine Roche of her abuse as “the most dramatic I have ever had to hear”, adding that “people must not be made feel that the judicial system has let them down”.
Ms Roche had addressed her brother in court last month saying: “You took everything away from me. You shattered my innocence by teaching me things no child should ever have to know.” She said she would no longer “keep quiet about the wrong” he inflicted on her “behind closed doors” in the three-bedroom family home of 14 people when she was aged between eight and 15 years.
Prosecution counsel Tara Burns had told the judge that Ms Roche wished to waive her right to anonymity and give her account of the abuse and its effects on her.
Ms Roche, now a 41-year-old mother, recalled a typical scenario where Fitzgerald signalled her with his eyes to follow him upstairs as she sat at the kitchen table knitting her doll a jumper. The abuse would happen in his bedroom, sometimes while he looked at pornographic magazines.
She told Judge O’Donnell that as she got older, her brother would touch parts of her developing body and that she still struggles to have a normal intimate relationship with her husband of 20 years or show her children love and affection because of this past abuse.
Fitzgerald, of Cleggan Road, Ballyfermot, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her from 1976 to 1982.
Another sister, who supported Fitzgerald in court, told Judge O’Donnell their father was “a domineering man who ruled the house with an iron fist” and raped her when she was 13. She and her other siblings would support their brother whatever the outcome of the case, and she handed a letter into court detailing the extent of physical and sexual abuse in the family, adding that she dealt with her suffering in her own way.
Judge O’Donnell acknowledged Ms Roche did not share this view of her father but said that despite the “dysfunctional nature” of the family: “I am impressed by the articulate manner in which sisters expressed their respective and different views.”
Fitzgerald acknowledged to his counsel, Seán Gillane, that he “wasn’t a very pleasant young fella at the time” due to what he claimed was his violent father and a sexually abusive Christian Brother at school. He said he was sorry for what he did to his sister, that he had waited years for this court case and that his own history of suffering abuse left him “mentally scarred”, with a stammer and a heavy drinking problem.
Mr Gillane described his client as both “abuser and abused”, stressing that Fitzgerald was not “set upon visiting horror on another for his own gratification” and said that the extended family did not wish to give the impression their door is closed to Ms Roche.
Ms Roche said after sentence: “This ordeal has been a very long and difficult road for me. Allegations were made in court about my deceased father that he was abusive and violent towards his children. I have no recollection of ever experiencing or meeting the man my siblings spoke about.”
She added: “Although the sentence handed down today may not seem long enough to some, I feel it acknowledges what my abuser did to me.”