A man who repeatedly raped his young daughter and subjected his former partner to a “prolonged, horrific and cruel attack” in which she thought she was going to be murdered has been jailed for 18 years.
The 44-year-old Dublin man, who can’t be named to protect the anonymity of his victims, engaged in a deliberate and calculated campaign of sexual abuse of his daughter, who was aged between five and eight at the time, Mr Justice Paul Burns said as he sentenced the man on Tuesday.
“The nature of the offending was abhorrent and depraved,” Mr Justice Burns said of the sexual abuse, noting the effects it has had on the man’s daughter, who is still a child.
A Central Criminal Court jury found him guilty of five counts of sexually assaulting his daughter and four counts of raping her on dates between February 2020 and February 2022. She was aged between five and eight at the time of the abuse.
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He was also found guilty of one count of exposing the child to pornography during the same time period.
Additionally, the man was found guilty of one count of false imprisonment of his former partner – the child’s mother – and one count of threatening to kill her during a prolonged incident on September 28th, 2023. On that date, he subjected her to a vicious and sustained assault in her home while their daughter was present.
After this incident, the child told her mother he had been abusing her. This information was provided previously, by a local detective garda, at the man’s sentence hearing.
The man pleaded guilty to one count of assault causing harm to his former partner in relation to the incident in September, 2023. The court heard he continues to deny the offending against his daughter and does not accept the guilty verdicts of the jury.
“This was a horrific, prolonged and cruel attack on a former partner in her own home and whose daughter witnessed aspects of it,” Mr Justice Burns said on Tuesday. He said the woman was “truly frightened” and “thought she was about to be murdered”.
He noted this attack fell under the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act and as a result, higher penalties should apply when sentencing the man.
The judge also noted the adverse effects the sexual abuse has had on the man’s daughter, noting she is still young and it will likely be some time before the full impact of the offending is known.
He imposed sentences of six years for the offending against the woman and 13 years for the offending against the child. He ordered the sentences to run consecutively and suspended the final year on a number of conditions, including that the man remain under the supervision of the Probation Service for three years after his release.
In victim-impact statements read out at a sentencing hearing earlier this month, the woman said her former partner’s continued denials have caused their now 10-year-old daughter “enormous hurt”.
“To put his own flesh and blood through this ordeal and to hear that his defence was to say she is lying has been even more damaging for her,” the woman said.
In the child’s victim-impact statement, which was read out by the detective garda, she said she didn’t know why her dad would lie.
“He always said he would never lie or hurt me,” she said. “So I’m a bit confused because he did lie and he did hurt me.”
The court heard that the sustained assault and false imprisonment of the woman took place when the man came to her home. They had previously been in a relationship for about 16 years but were no longer together and the woman was in a new relationship at the time, the court heard.
On this occasion, the man and woman were smoking crack cocaine when he flew into a rage and started assaulting her. Over the next 24-hour period, he hit and punched her to the body and face, choked her repeatedly and told her: “I’m f***ing ending you tonight.”
At one stage, their daughter came to the door asking if mummy is alright and why was she making “ch ch ch” sounds. The court heard this was a reference to the choking sounds the woman was making.
The man has 73 previous convictions, including for possession of knives and firearms. He has been in custody since December, 2024. The maximum terms for the crimes he committed range from five years to life imprisonment and the Director of Public Prosecutions placed his offending in the category of 15 years to life imprisonment, prosecuting counsel said.
