A 36-year-old Mayo farmer has been found guilty by a Central Criminal Court jury on 25 charges of rape and sexual assault of two neighbouring sisters who were babysitters for him.
Mr Justice Liam McKechnie remanded the father of three in custody for sentencing on October 28th and directed the preparation of victim impact reports for that hearing.
The jury of four women and eight men returned unanimous verdicts on all the charges after about nine hours deliberations. It was day 12 of the hearing and the jury spent one night in a hotel.
The 36-year-old married accused had pleaded not guilty to a total of 27 charges - 17 of them related to a now 18-year-old complainant on dates from September 1998 to May 1999 and 10 of them involved her elder sister on dates from April 1994 to September 1995.
The youngest complainant gave evidence of two acts of oral rape, two of unlawful carnal knowledge, 10 of attempted unlawful carnal knowledge and three of sexual assault. Mr Justice McKechnie withdrew two of the charges of attempted unlawful carnal knowledge from the jury before it began its deliberations.
Her now 22-year-old sister gave evidence of one offence each of oral rape and unlawful carnal knowledge, two of attempted unlawful carnal knowledge and six of sexual assault.
The jury heard the victims tell prosecuting counsel that they were aged 13-15 years when sexually molested by their neighbour. They said most of the offences happened in his car when he drove them home after babysitting. The offences came to light after the younger complainant spoke to a nun in her school who then contacted her mother. Gardaí were alerted and an investigation began.