Man jailed for two years for sexual abuse of his daughter

A Dublin man who sexually abused his daughter for a decade from when she was three years old has been jailed for two years.

In her victim impact report the victim, now aged 44, said she remembered wishing as a 10-year-old that she would die in her sleep.

The man, who cannot be named to protect his daughter’s identity, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 22 counts of indecent assault on his daughter between April 1972 and March 1982.

After she went to gardaí in 2011, her father (74) admitted that he had abused the girl once or twice a weekly and described his behaviour as “monstrous” and said he was “a sick human being”.

He also pleaded guilty to two charges relating to the indecent assault of two of her friends, when they were 11 and 14, in 1975 and 1982.

The man has no previous convictions and was registered a sex offender when he pleaded guilty last month.

Judge Mary Ellen Ring imposed consecutive sentences totalling 4½ years. She suspended 2½ years after considering his age and the absence of any other convictions.

Judge Ring said the man had failed to provide a safe environment for his daughter but she noted he was now assessed as being at a low risk of reoffending.

Det Garda Gerard Doyle told Gerardine Small, prosecuting, that the victim’s first memory of being molested by her father was being made perform oral sex on him, when she was aged 3½.