A woman has told a jury her stepfather ripped the earrings out of her ears when she was 10-years-old after she had been misbehaving.
The now 24-year-old was giving evidence in the trial of a garda who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of child cruelty against her on unknown dates between 2007 and 2024. He has also denied a charge of assault causing her harm on an unknown date in late 2021 to early 2022, after she had turned 18.
The 48-year-old man has also pleaded not guilty to two counts of raping his wife, this woman’s mother, on dates in 2009 and 2021 and to child cruelty of another daughter. All parties in the case have a statutory right to anonymity.
On Tuesday prosecuting barrister Dominic McGinn told the jury at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin that it was alleged the accused was “a violent and domineering father and husband” who subjected two of his daughters to “unreasonable chastisement” for most of their childhood.
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All the alleged offending took place at two locations in the north West of the country where the family was living at the relevant times.
In her direct evidence on Tuesday afternoon the wife of the accused described two incidents, one in 2009 and another in 2021, when she said her husband raped her. She said she had told him she did not want sex but he said he did not care and went ahead with it.
The older daughter told the jury that the accused had been her stepfather all her life. She described the relationship with the accused, who she referred to as her father, as “a strict relationship which became more tense”.
She said when she was ten years-old he physically ripped her earrings out because “I must have been misbehaving”.
She said on other occasions she would be made hold out her hands before the man would strike her with a spatula or sticks. She told the jury that she recalls being made go out to the garden to pick up sticks that would later be used to hit her, showing the jury a photograph of a particular tree that she would gather the sticks from.
“I always fell tense, always felt like I was doing something wrong, nothing was right, no matter what I did, I was never good enough,” the woman told the jury.
She recalled an occasion in November 2021 when she was 11-years-old. There was a disagreement between her and the accused in relation to what school she would attend. He wanted her to move to an Irish speaking school.
She said she was physically grabbed and dragged out of her bedroom. She was made wait outside the house for about 30 minutes and he would only allow her back into the house when she begged to be allowed.
The woman described other incidences when she would get into trouble for answering back. She described being knocked against a chest of draws and being dragged out by the scruff of her hoodie and pinned against a wall.
She said the man would not allow her to attend parties or play dates and would take away “things I liked” like books and toys.
She said she knew her father was a garda and would show her videos which she found upsetting but “he thought it was funny”.
She told the jury that she thought this kind of relationship was normal until she went to college and saw how other families interacted.
Earlier in the trial, the accused’s wife agreed when she was referred to messages exchanged between herself and a friend that she told her friend her two daughters “are willing to go to court to back me up”.
She accepted a suggestion from defending barrister James McGowan that she was speaking to her friend about divorce proceedings that had started between herself and the accused.
She agreed that she messaged her friend that she was going to use “domestic violence” as a reason for looking for a divorce.
When asked by the friend if she was not afraid that this would lead to a criminal case and potentially the accused going to jail, she messaged back – “He won’t go to jail – the reason for our divorce will be domestic violence – he is slandering my name and I am done with it”.
