A KILDARE man has been remanded in custody pending sentence for raping his two younger sisters more than 40 years ago, which left one of the women suicidal.
The man, in his early 60s, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court on the first day of his trial to five sample charges of raping the older sister and seven charges of raping the other woman at their Kildare family home between June 1963 and January 1969.
He has one previous conviction in England for indecent assault in October 1965, for which he received a £25 fine.
Mr Justice Paul Carney adjourned sentencing to next week and placed the man on the sex offenders’ register.
Garda Aisling Currams told Paul McDermott SC, prosecuting, that the older sister was aged 14 when her brother started to rape her regularly in the yard of the family home, on a nearby bog when they were footing turf during the summer, or in a wooded area close to the house.
The abuse stopped when she was 17, after she moved out of the family home. He then started to rape the younger sister, who was then aged 12, which continued for 2½ years, at which point her mother forced her to leave the home after learning of her brother’s behaviour.
She was raped regularly in the yard of the family home and in a field at the back of the house.
Mr McDermott read from a victim impact report from the older sister, now 60, which stated she repeatedly tried to kill herself by overdosing on pills or gassing herself. She now had to take antidepressants and sleeping tablets to “just get through the day”.
“I have been sentenced to a life of torment and shame until the day I die when I will have some relief. My brother has tarnished everything I had to live for and has left me like a burnt stick,” she said.
The younger sister, now 56, who said she could only sleep for one hour a day because she is still “haunted by nightmares”, said she often blamed herself and wondered whether she could have stopped the abuse.
“My brother walks around with his head held high while I keep my head down in shame because of the abuse I suffered,” she said in her statement.
Both women told gardaí in their victim impact statements they were left with no education because their brother made them stay off school so he could abuse them and that he had destroyed their childhood and their chance of a normal upbringing.
The older sister stated that she felt guilty when she left home because she knew she had left her sister to suffer abuse at his hands.
Garda Currams said the women first reported the abuse to gardaí in November 2005 after their brother moved into the same estate as the older sister and she became concerned for the safety of her children and grandchildren.
Barry Hickson SC, defending, said a clinical psychologist had assessed his client as having a “low risk of reoffending” and of being of limited intelligence. He asked Mr Justice Carney to accept his client’s guilty plea and said his client was remorseful and realised what he had done was wrong.