A 40-year-old north Dublin man has been jailed for nine years by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court for rapes and sexual assaults on a brother and sister over a number of years.
The man pleaded guilty to 18 sample charges out of 281 counts on the indictment after a jury had been sworn in for his trial last July. Seven of the charges related to oral rape, two were for rape and nine counts for sexual assaults on dates from 1992 to 1997 at various north city suburban venues.
The court heard the victims made their complaints in 2003. They were aged from 10 into their early teens when abused by the trusted family friend who had had a relationship with their sister.
The abuse began with fondling outside clothes and progressed to touching inside the clothes, on to full penetrative sex with the girl and masturbation and oral sex with the boy. Mr Justice Carney directed that the man be registered as a sex offender and that he undergo five years post-release supervision. He suspended the final year of the sentence because of his guilty plea.
"He groomed these victims for sexual abuse by his early touching and fondling in what was the grossest possible breach of trust," the judge said.
Det Sgt Fionnuala Olohan said that when asked at interview if he hadn't realised that what he was doing was wrong, he replied: "I had a strange life myself. There was a fine line in my mind about what was right and what was wrong." He began counselling at this time and apologised to the victims.
Dr Davina Walsh, senior clinical psychologist at the Granada Institute, told the court the man admitted the sexual abuse when he presented with his wife at the institute and was anxious to engage in counselling.
His wife said she was shocked and horrified when her husband disclosed his offending to her but she said he was a good husband and father.
The relevant authorities were satisfied after investigation that his own children had not been interfered with and were not at risk.
The defendant experienced "a negative home life" of severe violence resulting in hospitalisation and was left in a situation that he had nobody to guide him from childhood into adulthood. Dr Walsh said that as a result of the abuse he suffered himself as a child, "in an atmosphere of violence, trauma and turmoil", he had "shut down emotionally".
Mr Justice Carney said he gave careful regard to the evidence of Dr Walsh which accorded with the court's experience that men who had been abused as children often repeated that abuse themselves but he couldn't "in any way entertain" her suggestion that he impose a non-custodial sentence.
"I will have regard to her evidence by not imposing a sentence in double figures, which this case should attract on the facts," he added.