A 44-year-old man has been jailed for seven years after he pleaded guilty to twice raping and sexually assaulting his then 10-year-old niece during a visit to his sister’s house in Co Cork over five years ago
The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, pleaded guilty to two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault on two separate occasions in July and August 2018.
The man had been remanded for sentencing to the Central Criminal Court in Cork and Ms Justice Siobhan Lankford recalled the evidence given by Det Garda Martin Bohane at the earlier hearing.
She said the accused had been visiting his sister when he went into the room of his niece and raped her.
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Some weeks later when he was again staying at the house, on this occasion with his partner, he got up in the night and again raped the girl and sexually assaulted her.
The girl later told her mother when they were discussing puberty how her uncle had touched her private parts and “had put his into hers” and the girl’s mother contacted her GP who alerted Tusla.
The girl was interviewed by Tusla social workers, and she confirmed to them what she had told her mother and she later made a statement to Garda specialist interviewers after Tusla notified gardaí
Tusla staff also interviewed the accused in November 2019 and he was frank and co-operative and fully accepted the allegations made against him by his niece, said Ms Justice Lankford.
She recalled the man told Tusla interviewer he was “blind drunk” at the time, but he co-operated fully and made admissions and told them he did not want to family “to go through anything further”.
He was later arrested and questioned by gardaí, but he made no admissions on the advice of his solicitor, but he entered a guilty plea to all charges when he was first arraigned on April 10th.
Ms Justice Lankford said she had read the girl’s victim impact statement and noted that, while the girl had said she was a quiet, shy child before the rapes, she was even more reclusive now.
She said the girl had told how she now felt it was hard to trust men because of what her uncle had done to her and she also felt that her uncle had badly betrayed her mother by his actions.
She noted the girl had also spoken about the impact it had on her relationship with her grandmother, as she no longer felt comfortable visiting her grandmother when her uncle was at home there.
Turning to the accused, Ms Justice Lankford noted that prosecution counsel, Tom Creed SC had informed the court that the DPP viewed the offending as falling into the most serious category.
She said she agreed and that it merited a headline sentence of 12 and a half years, but she had to take into account a number of mitigating factors highlighted by defence counsel Ray Boland SC.
She noted that the man, who had a good work record, had never been in trouble with gardaí before and had no previous convictions and had not come to Garda attention since this offending.
She also noted his offending had cost him personally as it led to the ending of a relationship with his partner with whom he had a young son, and he no longer had any contact with the boy.
It had also, no doubt, cost him his relationship with his family, said Ms Justice Lankford as she noted that he had expressed remorse and written a letter of apology for what he had done to his niece.
She also pointed out that his entering of a guilty plea was significant in that by doing so, he had spared his niece the trauma of having to give evidence in what would have been a difficult trial.
She said that in all those circumstances, in particular the guilty plea, she would reduce the headline sentence to eight and a half years and suspend the final 18 months to incentivise his rehabilitation.
She also made it a condition of the suspension that he have no contact with his niece or any of her family and that he remain under the supervision of the Probation Service for 18 months post release.
“He will also be placed on the sex offenders register,” said Ms Justice Lankford as she commended the girl for her bravery and her mother for the swift action she took when she learned of the rapes.
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