A 63-year-old man has been sentenced to four-years in prison for indecently assaulting nine girls aged between five and 15-years.
Edwin Curry, 33 Kells Road, Kilkenny, Co Kilkenny was convicted of 189 counts of indecent assault on the girls over a 21-year period.
The trial at Kilkenny Circuit Court last November heard Curry used “kittens and sweets” to lure the children into a shed at the back of his parents’ house where the assaults took place.
The court heard he “repeatedly indecently assaulted” his victims on a “daily and weekly basis” on dates between 1964 and 1985 and that he had sexual intercourse and performed oral sex with one of the girls.
It was also revealed he had “touched the girls’ genitals and made them touch his penis and that he took photographs of two of the girls when they were naked.
His victims told how Curry would lift them up to reach money he had placed in the beams of the shed and how he lifted them onto a swing in the shed and indecently touched them in the process.
Four of Mr Curry’s victims read victim impact statements to the court today.
One of the women, now 35, told the court she was abused “once or twice a week” between the age of five and nine years. She said the abuse “haunts her every day” and that Curry’s actions have made her feel like she was a “child prostitute”.
Another woman told the court how Curry “had stolen her childhood” and that he had “persecuted” her for nine-years of her childhood and for “the rest” of her adult life.
Another victim said her life was “full of sleepless nights” and that the act of sex to her now was “disgusting, ugly and dark”.
His victims expressed “disappointment” today at the four-year sentence imposed by Ms Justice Olive Buttimer.
A spokesperson for the women said she was “appalled that 189 counts of indecent assault on nine victims over 20-years only merited four years in prison”.
One of the women told the court how Curry threatened to abuse her younger sister if she didn’t go into the shed with him.
Curry was described in court as a “recluse”, who had never left his parent’s home and lived on his own in “dreadful” conditions since the late 1990s.
Garda Pat Starr said that when gardaí went to search his house in 2005 they discovered a number of dead cats in boxes with their names written on each box.
John Peart SC for Curry read a statement from his client in which he pleaded not to be given a custodial sentence on “humanitarian grounds” and in which he offered his victims his “deepest apologies”.
Ms Justice Buttimer said the offences constituted a “disastrous breech of trust” of children and that the “sexual abuse of children over a 20-year period is a most serious offence”.
She sentenced Curry to four years in prison to run from his date of conviction last November and ordered that he be placed on the sex offenders’ register and refused leave for an appeal.