A MAN HAS been convicted of raping and sexually assaulting his teenage daughter.
The Central Criminal Court jury found the man guilty of rape between April and June 2006 and one count of sexual assault between March and June 2006. The jurors were unable to agree on three further counts of sexual assault.
The man (46), who cannot be named for legal reasons, had pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and four counts of sexual assault between September 2005 and June 2006. The girl was aged 14 and 15 at the time.
Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne ordered the man be registered as a sex offender and ordered the preparation of a victim impact report for sentencing next month. She set a sentence date of December 8th.
During the trial, the now 19- year-old woman, giving evidence via video link, told Isobel Kennedy SC, prosecuting, that her father used to come into her bedroom and “touch me up”. It happened “not every night but most nights”. When she woke up she told him to get off her but he would not.
She told Ms Kennedy that on one occasion when she was 15, her father came into her bedroom and pinned her on the bed and raped her and she struggled to get away. She said the incident lasted 10 or 15 minutes. Her father called her a whore towards the end when she said she would scream. She felt dirty, upset and confused afterwards.
The woman told Ms Kennedy that when she called her father “a pervert”, he kicked her in the face.
The woman agreed with Kenneth Fogarty SC, defending, during cross examination, that her father had told her he was sorry he ever had her following an argument. She was upset and she found the comment was hurtful.
The accused man, giving evidence on his own behalf, told Mr Fogarty that his daughter “makes up stories on a regular basis about a lot of people”. He had told gardaí he had not been getting on with her. “There had been lots of shenanigans, a catalogue of things from previous weeks.” He said she was a “compulsive liar” and was always causing trouble.