A Co Kerry man, who is serving a 13-year jail term for raping his daughter and sexually assaulting two of his granddaughters, has been sentenced to an additional four years in prison for sexually assaulting a third grandchild.
The man, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of his victims, was found guilty by a jury of two counts of sexually assaulting the girl. Judge Pat Meghan said the man was guilty of a “serious breach of trust”.
The abuse occurred when the girl was aged between seven and eight, a time when the judge said she would have “expected to be loved and protected by her grandfather”.
The court heard the sexual assaults had a profound impact on the girl, who is now in her mid-teens. “She starved herself; she was suicidal; self-harm; insomnia; anxiety and depression, which led to PTSD,” the judge said.
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The man pleaded not guilty and continues to protest his innocence, Tralee Circuit Court heard. The abuse happened at his home when his wife was out on errands and the girl’s mother was at work.
The victim made a formal statement to gardaí when she was 14, telling them she “didn’t know whether to cry or scream” during the incidents. The man abused the girl while they played “hide and seek” and told her “bad things” would happen to her mother and grandmother if she told them what had happened, the court heard.
The complainant told gardaí that she had “really cared” for her grandfather and they “did everything together” before the abuse began. She denied a suggestion by the man’s barrister, Anthony Sammon SC, that she had been encouraged by others to make false allegations against her grandfather.
Following his arrest, the man told gardaí: “It didn’t happen, that’s the Gospel truth. This is fabricated by someone.”
Mr Sammon told the court he was “not offering anything in mitigation as (the man) wishes to declare he does not accept the findings of the jury”. In 2015 the man was charged with 37 counts of rape and sexual assault of other members of his family. Prior to his trial for those offences, the State accepted his guilty plea to 12 sample counts.
The four-year sentence imposed for abusing the third grandchild is to run consecutively to the 13-year sentence received over the 2015 case.