Two brothers and a third man, a family friend, have gone on trial charged with a combined total of 56 charges of sexually and physically abusing a boy and a girl over an eight-year period starting in 1990 when the girl was aged six and the boy aged seven.
The charges include rape, gross indecency with children, indecent assault, buggery, common assault and child cruelty.
One of the defendants is charged with making his house available for the defilement of his daughter. The allegations have been made by the daughter and son of one of the defendants.
Opening the trial at Derry Crown Court, sitting in Coleraine before Judge Gordon Kerr, prosecutor Jackie Orr told the jury they might find some of the evidence distressing.
The jury was told of drinking parties attended by eight or nine men where the children’s father allegedly allowed his daughter to be raped.
“The men played cards to see who would go first,” Ms Orr told the court.
She said the evidence involved prolonged physical abuse, beatings, throttlings and both victims being burned with cigarettes by one of their abusers. The physical abuse then escalated into serious sexual abuse including multiple rapes.
Access visits
Ms Orr told the court the alleged attacks happened when the boy and girl, who are now adults, were on access visits to the home of their estranged father. It
is alleged the father sexually abused his son and daughter and allowed other men, including his brother and a friend, to abuse them too.
Ms Orr said on one occasion, the accused men “took it in turns to rape her. She was crying and they were laughing. They videotaped it and later they made her watch it.”
The trial continues.