THE DAUGHTER of the 86-year-old woman raped by Simon McGinley told the Central Criminal Court that her mother had been a “courageous and resourceful” woman whose capabilities had been “dramatically swept away” by her violent ordeal.
“The spark that lit up her days has gone forever,” the court was told.
In a victim impact statement before Mr Justice George Birmingham, the victim’s daughter added that her mother had given up on visiting her friends.
She told the court: “My mother was a courageous and resourceful woman who raised 10 children in difficult times. It wasn’t until she was in her 60s that she had the leisure [time] and the modest financial means to begin to really enjoy her life.
“She loved to travel and made regular trips to visit family and friends in England, Europe, and America as well as the four corners of Ireland and was still doing so up until the time of the rape last year.
“She was active in voluntary fundraising for her favourite local charity and attentive in various weekly observances of her faith.
“Her greatest passion was gardening and she spent countless hours tending to her plants and visiting famous gardens wherever she went. She relished all these pleasures with enthusiasm and engagement.
“It is true to say she had, in recent years, become forgetful, mislaid things and needed help in navigating any complicated paperwork. But she was still able to drive her limited routes, to run her home and to function effectively on her own. She valued, and was proud of, her independence.
“All that capability was dramatically swept away almost overnight last June. The family is in no doubt that the rape by Simon McGinley led to a marked acceleration of her incipient dementia.
“It very quickly became clear that she could no longer function on her own, as before. She now needs someone to be with her at all times, to drive, shop, cook, clean – to effectively take over the running of her life.
“A second consequence of the rape has been an abiding fearfulness that is never far from my mother’s sense of her life now. She came from a place and a culture where people lived trustingly in their community.
“That security has been shattered. She tries to put on a brave face, and claims that she has ‘put all that behind her’, the way she always dealt with life’s setbacks in the past. That courageous approach can not serve her now.
“The sight of an unfamiliar face, a man passing the kitchen window, an unexpected knock at the door, can be a cause now of extreme anxiety and agitation for her. Fear is never far from the surface.
“Bad as these two consequences of the assault are, the most heartbreaking result is the loss of joy from my mother’s life. There has been a complete rupture with all the activities that gave her life pleasure and meaning.
“She is no longer interested in meeting up with friends other than , no longer goes to Mass, no longer travels and, above all, no longer cares about her garden.
“To sum up, instead of the gradual, easeful decline into advanced years that her own parents had enjoyed, our mother was taken from the still-golden phase of her life and thrust brutally into its terminal stages by Simon McGinley’s crime.”
The last section of the victim impact statement was not permitted to be read in court.
Mr Justice Birmingham said it could not be permitted because victim impact statements should outline the impact of a crime on the victim and not recommend what sanction might be imposed.
The victim’s daughter told the court the final part of the statement was in her own mother’s words and asked that the section be permitted to be read out in court. Mr Justice Birmingham said he could not cede to the request.
However, outside the court the victim’s family supplied the final section of the impact statement to the media.
It read: “I would like to finish with my mother’s own words, the words she always uses to close the conversation whenever the rape by Simon McGinley is mentioned by friends and well-wishers.
“I just hope,’’ she says, ‘‘that that man will be put away for a very long time, so that he will never again be free to do to any other woman what he did to me.”
