ABUSE SENTENCING:A MAN who repeatedly raped and assaulted four of his daughters over 18 years has been given a life prison sentence by Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court, sitting in Castlebar, Co Mayo.
The 50-year-old accused showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down. Mr Justice Carney also imposed a prison sentence of up to seven years on charges of assault, ill-treatment and neglect of the daughters, some of whom were as young as five when the horrifying litany of abuse and torture began.
Passing sentence yesterday, the judge said there was no issue but that the case was at the top end of the range of offences as regards both the multiplicity of the crimes and their heinousness.
He went on to describe as “a credible threat” the fact the accused had remarked that he would kill one of his victims.
In evidence presented on Thursday, one of the victims recounted how her father had said: “If you say anything, you are dead . . . No matter how long I get, I will hunt you down and kill you.”
The judge went on to say the drinking of the accused and his “dysfunctional background” offered little or no mitigation.
The accused, who is a member of the Travelling community, is already serving a 14-year sentence for raping another daughter and fathering two children by her.
He initially pleaded not guilty to a total of 271 charges of rape, assault, ill-treatment and neglect of the four daughters between 1991 and 2009. The following day he pleaded guilty to 14 sample charges in respect of all four.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Carney noted the plea of guilty had come only after a jury had been empanelled – a process that had taken a number of hours.
The judge, who refused leave to appeal, ordered the accused should begin his sentences from December 24th, 2009. The sentences are to run concurrently.
Members of the accused’s family were in court yesterday when the sentence was handed down.
One daughter spoke briefly to her father before the proceedings started.
During evidence on Thursday, when victim impact statements were read, the court also heard the accused’s wife was in prison serving eight years for cruelty to eight of her children.
One of the daughters, in a victim impact statement, described her father as “an animal that destroyed her”.
Another daughter described how her father would take her into the woods “the way no one would hear you scream”.
She said she could not read or write and the only reason she was alive today was because of her children, who “give me some hope that things might be better in the future”.