Jailed at last, rapist who impregnated his daughter
Serial predator who abused seven of his children and sister gets 20 years
Still hears her father’s voice ‘Raped hundreds, thousands of times’
A SERIAL predator who raped and sexually abused his sister and seven of his daughters for more than two decades – fathering a child with one daughter – has been jailed for 20 years.
After the sentence was passed on depraved 75-year-old James O’Reilly, seven of his victims, all daughters, embraced and cheered as they celebrated ‘the end of a nightmare’.
From 1977 to 2000, O’Reilly – a Traveller from Tipperary – subjected the young girls to ‘horrific’ sexual abuse, as well as beatings, starvation and degradation, the Central Criminal Court heard.
The abuse occurred against a backdrop of squalor and poverty.
His victims bravely waived their anonymity yesterday, to name and shame their abuser.
In 1988, O’Reilly raped one of his daughters, Margaret Hutchinson, causing her to become pregnant. He continued to rape her during the pregnancy. She gave birth to a daughter the following year.
At the time, O’Reilly told his daughter to allege she had been raped by another man.
He continued abusing her and only stopped when she threatened him with a knife.
Later DNA tests confirmed he was the father, a factor which was used to secure his conviction.
His sister, Christine Rooney, was just 13 when her brother first raped her. She told how he would not feed her and left her to beg outside for food.
Another of his daughters, Helen O’Donoghue, told the court how she was raped, starved and beaten all her life. She said that as a child she did not know what a Christmas present was or what Christmas dinner was. She said she did not even know what age she was until she got married.
Helen’s sister, Mary Moran, said her father destroyed her life and took everything from her, and that she struggles to wake each morning. Another daughter, Anne Reilly, said she loves her children to bits and that if she did not have them she would kill herself.
Bridget O’Reilly said she still hears her father’s voice and has flashbacks daily. She said she is afraid to go to sleep and will stay up for days at a time, and that she sometimes locks herself away and goes for days without eating.
Kathleen O’Driscoll said her father threatened that if she told anyone about the abuse, he would cut her throat and the throat of the person she told. She said she had watched him cut the throats of goats. Another daughter, Philomena Connors, said she sometimes wonders why her mother had her and that she wishes she had never been born. She said she always had emptiness in her heart and she still has to this day.
Margaret Hutchinson, who became pregnant after her father repeatedly raped her, said the abuse was a constant part of her life. Her father threatened that he would make her pregnant and that no one would marry her. He eventually made her pregnant when she was just 16.
He wanted her to give the baby up for adoption. She said her baby was a secret that he wanted to get rid of but she would not let him.
After giving birth, she said she was ‘dirty’ in the community. No other Traveller parents would let their daughters be friends with her, she told the court.
O’Reilly was aged around 34 when he raped the first victim, his 13-year-old younger sister. He abused her for the next three years, attacking her in a van.
He first abused the second victim, his daughter, when her mother was in hospital having suffered a miscarriage. His daughter was aged between four and six.
In 1977, she was aged around eight when he drove her in his van to a bog and raped her. He told her she would be put into foster care if she told anyone. One victim testified that from the age of ten she was raped in the back of van if it was raining and outside the van in a field if it wasn’t.
O’Reilly raped another daughter when her mother was in hospital giving birth to another child.
This baby boy died in 1983 and while his partner was grieving, O’Reilly took one girl out and raped her in the pony shed.
O’Reilly moved the family around the country, and in the late 1980s they were living at a location in the south where he continued to abuse them. One victim, who was raped until she was 20, said she couldn’t tell her husband because ‘saying you are being raped [as a] Traveller is like being thrown to the side of the road; you’d have to go back to the bog’.
Kathleen O’Driscoll said one of her earliest childhood memories was her father abusing her.
She said she prayed each night that she would not wake up.
Margaret Hutchinson was aged ten in 1981 when her father first began molesting her. A year later he raped her in the back of a van.
She testified that during this time he raped her ‘hundreds, thousands of times’.
A witness at the trial recalled how in 1986 she met this victim in the bog and ‘she was shaking and crying’. She said she still gets knots in her stomach remembering how the victim told her that her father was abusing her.
Another victim recalled being hospitalised with a head injury from beatings. She was ten when her father began raping her, and he’d rape her up to three times a week for the next six years.
Judge Tony Hunt said a life sentence was the appropriate starting point based on the horrific facts. He said the mitigating factors presented carried little weight and that the main factor submitted in mitigation was O’Reilly’s age.
He noted that O’Reilly was in robust good health when he was interviewed four years ago but there was evidence his health has deteriorated since.
The judge said the difference between a life sentence and a lengthy but finite sentence may be academic given O’Reilly’s age.
He imposed a range of sentences from two years to 20 years.
A number of victims sobbed during the sentence hearing and as sentence was passed.