Father jailed for raping daughter on weekly basis

A MAN who told gardaí he considered his daughter a ‘partner’ by night has been jailed for 15 years for raping and sexually assaulting her from when she was a young child.

The 52-year-old man pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to 21 sample charges, including rape, attempted rape and sexual assaults in Dublin and Leinster on dates ranging from January 2006 to December 2017.

He can’t be named to protect his daughter’s identity.

He also pleaded guilty to three counts of assault causing harm to his daughter on dates from June 2016 to December 2017. He has no previous convictions.

A local garda revealed that on one occasion the man gave his daughter two black eyes.

He said the now 17-year-old suspected this was because her father had seen an image of her on her phone in which he had deemed her inappropriately dressed.

The garda told Conor Devally SC, prosecuting, that a subsequent beating had put the girl out of school for a time.

He said that after his arrest the man admitted his abuse, but downplayed beating the girl and suggested that he viewed her ‘by day, father and daughter, by night, partner’.

The court heard that one summer the girl thought she was pregnant and this caused ‘temporary respite’ for a month but when it transpired she was not, the abuse resumed.

The girl told gardaí that no week went by without her being raped and that the attacks happened almost daily on weekends and during holidays.

In her victim impact statement which she read out in court, the girl said that her father ‘tore her soul apart’.

‘I cared about him from the depths of my heart, but he broke that,’ she said.

Yesterday Judge Michael White said the offences were ‘at the very apex of seriousness’ and noted the ‘profound breach of trust’ involved.

He said the ‘moving’ victim impact statement reflected how the man had used his daughter’s ‘filial love to isolate her and cruelly abuse her’.

He said the young woman was abused in a way he found hard to describe.

The judge took into account the man’s genuine remorse, his deep shame and isolation from his family.

He imposed an 18-year prison sentence with the final three suspended on condition that the man undergo the Better Lives treatment programme in jail.