A court has heard a woman underwent breast reduction surgery after suffering sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her granduncle.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault by a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court earlier in July.
In a victim impact statement read out in court, the woman said she spent €6,000 on breast reduction surgery as she felt her granduncle “owned my boobs” and she felt “uneasy with compliments” from her husband.
The 39-year-old woman said she suffered from nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia and depression and “a black cloud hangs over me for days at a time” as a result of the abuse.
She also said she suffered panic attacks in her sleep and often woke up with tightness in her chest.
The statement also said the victim, now a mother herself, had suicidal thoughts in the past and had to tell her older children about the abuse so they would understand she “couldn’t help it and apologised for letting them down”.
The incidents happened between 1987 and 1992, when the victim was aged between eight and 13. She reported the incidents to gardaí in 2010.
In her statement, the victim said she was hospitalised for five days after she suffered hearing loss associated with stress due to making the statement to gardaí.
Grandparents’ house
The court heard the victim’s father was an alcoholic and she was regularly sent to her paternal grandparents’ house in Dublin, where her granduncle also lived, to collect sleeping tablets for her father.
The investigating garda said the victim made a statement to him in 2010 in which she detailed five specific incidents of abuse.
He said she recalled two incidents where her granduncle kissed her on the mouth and on the neck in the parlour of her grandparents’ house and a third incident where he kissed her on the mouth and neck and touched and kissed her breasts.
The garda said she told him about two further incidents where he kissed her on the mouth, kissed and touched her breasts and penetrated her vagina with his fingers.
Colman FitzGerald, defending, said the man was assaulted by the victim’s sibling after she made the statement to gardaí and had been forced to leave the house where the abuse took place and where he had lived since he was a child.
He also said that the man, now aged 77, had no previous convictions and a custodial sentence would make up “a significant part of the remainder of his life”.
Judge Elma Sheahan remanded the man in custody and he is due to be sentenced on October 3rd, 2016.