Joe McColgan: an intimidating, manipulative man, obsessed with control. Said by social workers to be "very domineering with an ar- chaic idea of a father's role in the family". Shopkeepers in Ballymote knew not to attempt to engage him in small talk.
Born in 1942 to a respectable family in Sligo town. He claimed he was physically abused by his father and sexually abused by a neighbour. He also said he had been abused as a teenager in Dublin and Liverpool.
Married Patsy Bereen in 1967 and moved to Britain. Worked there intermittently, apparently having difficulty holding down a job. Wife also worked; three chil- dren sent back to Ireland to be reared by her parents.
McColgan used this as an ex- cuse for abusing them when he appeared in court in 1995. "I knew [Sophia] was my daughter but I did not have a fatherly bond with her because she was reared by her grandparents and they in- terfered with my parental rights.
In February 1995 he pleaded guilty to 26 charges of physically and sexually abusing his eldest three children. Sentenced to 12 years.
Sophia McColgan: Father started sex abuse around time of her First Communion. Beat her with sally rods and blackthorn stick. The abuse included attempted drownings and locking her in a room, refusing to let her go to the toilet.
Sexually abused her, often using instruments to rape her. Would collect her from school and, later, college, and take her to the derelict cottage on his land on the mountain where he would rape her. Sometimes he took her there after leading his family to Mass.
Abuse happened three or four times a week until she was 21. He threw out of the house. He used a cattle-dosing syringe to insert spermicide into her vagina after sex. When she had her period he would kick her out of frustration.
During all this time she was also subjected to constant beatings and threats that he would kill her.
Keith McColgan: At 21, the youngest of the children to have been abused by their father. Was 17 when the abuse of his older brother and sisters came to light. He was not mentioned in the prosecution case at the criminal trial in 1995.
However, he too was regularly physically abused as a child and sexually abused as a teenager. In one incident he was dragged into the bathroom and a rag stuffed into his mouth, almost choking him. As a child he had about a dozen admissions to hospital with nervous ailments.
When he was nine he realised his father was sexually abusing his sister, Michelle, and asked her about it. She told their father and as a result Keith suffered a severe beating from him.
When he was 13 his father started to keep him home from school. This was when he started to sexually abuse him also.
Michelle McColgan: Was sexually and physically abused by her father between 1982 and 1993, when she reported it to gardai. Her father tried to drown her when she was six, leaving her with a lasting fear of water.
When she was eight, he sought to initiate her into sexual activity, forcing her into a small front bedroom in the cottage and making her take off her clothes. She was aware this was inappropriate behaviour.
When she was 11 he brought her on his motor-bike to the land where much of the abuse of the children took place, and there he had full sexual intercourse with her. From then until June 1993 he forced intercourse, oral and anal sex on her, including rape with instruments. He also forced her to spend entire nights with him.
Dissatisfied with her resistance, in June 1993 he ran her over with his motor-bike. She went to a doctor and the whole litany of abuse came to light.
Gerard McColgan: The one mem- ber of the family who came to the attention of the authorities as a result of injuries caused by his father's physical abuse.
The incidents involved having his forehead opened with a blow of a hammer; his knuckles crushed by a concrete block; his arm broken by a shovel; his leg crushed by a trailer when his father forced him to jump off a moving tractor; his neck cut by a spanner.
He was also subjected to hor- rific sexual abuse. He was fre- quently raped by his father. In one of the most obscene incidents, his father tried, unsuccessfully, to force him to have sex with his sis- ter. He also used pornographic pictures, mirrors and a camera with a flash to enhance his grati- fication as he abused them.
He was taken into care for about nine months in 1983, where he revealed the sexual abuse, but was later forced to withdraw the allegation by his father.