Chloe was 11 when letter she wrote to mum brought to light abuse by her father

Dad is jailed for 11-and-a-half years after being found guilty of raping daughter

A survivor of sexual abuse was just 11 when she wrote a letter to her mother that uncovered the shocking trauma inflicted on her by her father.

Chloe Mullane (19) waited seven years for justice after being raped by her father from the age of just six.

She spoke out yesterday after her father Cyril Mullane (51) was jailed for 11-and-a-half years at the Central Criminal Court for the prolonged abuse of his daughter.

Ms Mullane revealed that she was only 11 when she first reported the abuse after a letter to her mother signified that he was forcing her to touch him.

When asked why she decided to waive her anonymity in the case, Ms Mullane said: “I did it in the hope that other survivors of sexual abuse might come forward when they hear about my case.

“I want to give a little bit of hope for other survivors that these people can be punished.

“My mum and myself have been fighting this case for almost eight years. We hope this day will be a new chapter in our lives.”

Cyril Mullane had no involvement in the first six years of his daughter’s life. As soon as he was invited to spend time with the little girl, he embarked on a campaign of abuse.

In January, a Central Criminal Court jury found him guilty of 26 counts of sexually abusing Chloe on dates between June 2011 and September 2016, when she was aged between six and 12.

Father-of-three Mullane, with an address at Borefield, Strokestown, Co Roscommon, was found guilty of 11 counts of oral rape, 14 counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted rape at his then-homes in Co Sligo and Norfolk in the UK. He had denied the charges.

To compound the stress that Ms Mullane had to deal with, this was the third time the trial had come before the courts.

It had previously been adjourned because of the Covid pandemic, while a jury failed to reach a verdict in the case at another court hearing.

Cyril Mullane still insists he is not guilty of the offences which Ms Mullane said led to her making seven attempts on her life as well as multiple self-harm incidents. That has led to scarring on her arms, shoulders and legs.

Now based in the UK, Ms Mullane said she would not have been able to survive the campaign of abuse by her father without the support of her network of family and friends.

That support network was led by her mother Naomi and a son of Cyril Mullane’s from another relationship, Patrick.

Ms Mullane also praised the investigation work and support that she received from gardaí and police in Norfolk, England, who she originally made her criminal complaint to.

“I am pretty scarred,” she said. “At one stage I pulled all my hair out. I hope there are no other victims of my father but I don’t know.”

Welcoming the prison sentence handed down to her father, she said she “had no idea why he did what he did”.

“Me and my mum came to the conclusion years ago that his brain was wired differently to normal people,” she said.

“I remember almost every incident of the abuse and this started when I was six years old.”

She described the sentence handed down to her abuser as a “relief” – welcoming the fact that he will not be around children for many years because he will be “in jail, where he belongs”.

“I never want to see him again,” said Ms Mullane, who now hopes to spend more time in Ireland, especially with her family and friends in Co Roscommon.

Her mother and father had a ninemonth relationship. He moved away following the break-up of the relationship, while Naomi was pregnant.

When Chloe was six, her father began visiting her home to get to know her. She would then stay with him.

However, instead of the normal loving relationship she wanted, the court heard her childhood years were poisoned.

She spoke of being left “confused, isolated and angry”.

She would visit her father’s home in Rainbow Cottage, Castlebaldwin, Co Sligo. Later, she made visits to his home in Norfolk.

Sentencing Cyril Mullane yesterday, Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo said Ms Mullane’s youth “was poisoned by the abuse to which she was subjected”.

“She is still struggling to get over it,” he said.

The judge added that a sad aspect of the case was that Ms Mullane was initially excited to have her father back in her life.

She continued to wish for a normal relationship with him, even as he continued to abuse her.

The judge noted a number of aggravating factors, including the “elevated degradation” of the sexual abuse, given her young age.

He noted it was a significant breach of trust and the abuse took place over a five-year period, capturing most of Ms Mullane’s childhood.

The judge handed down a sentence of 13 years. He suspended the final 18 months of the sentence on a number of conditions.

“Me and my mum concluded years ago that his brain was wired differently” Chloe Mullane

‘Isee that you’re married,” Marianne said, pointing down at the gold ring on my left hand. We were sitting in a sunroom at the back of the 84-year-old woman’s house. The windowsills were filled with blushing hydrangeas, and a pile of knitting was tidied away neatly in the corner.

“I wish you a long and happy life, and that you may have freedoms. You won’t have all the freedoms you want, nobody does,” she said.

“But within certain limits, you’ll have freedoms. And you’ll use them wisely. You won’t be told to go home, and that you can’t work any more. Which is what we were told.”

In 1959, when she was 20 years old, Marianne was forced to resign just two years into her career at the Dublin Corporation, which later became Dublin City Council, by Ireland’s marriage bar.

Marianne, which is not her real name, is a very articulate but private lady who could not be persuaded to be named in this article. “I’m too old for that,” she said, waving me off.

She is a prolific letter writer, and used to write often to the editors of national newspapers with her thoughts about important issues. For at least the last 15 years, maybe more, she has written to every taoiseach, every social protection minister, every local TD to try to raise the case of women like her.

“Women who put their life into their home and their family, as directed by the state. And have nothing to show for it, just nothing,” she said.

“I just don’t exist, pension-wise.” Thousands of Irish women like Marianne either have limited or no state pension entitlements, because they were forced out of work by the marriage bar.

“Nobody has ever come back to me,” she said. “I put good stamps on those letters. I’m not particularly looking for something into my own hand. I just think the whole idea of women having been sacked on marriage is unjust.”

Between the ages of 14 and 16, Marianne did a full-time commercial course before being strongly advised to continue her studies. She did, through another two-year, night-time course, before getting what was then the highest qualification possible within her field. She was able to type 90 words a minute, or 150 in shorthand. Marianne sat an exam with Dublin Corporation, coming seventh out of a class of 276.

She was offered a job immediately. Marianne was working for less than two years when she met her future husband and got married. As one part of her life began, another came to an abrupt end. She was required by the marriage bar, Ireland’s legally enforced system of discrimination against women, to resign.

“I loved what I was doing, absolutely loved it,” Marianne said. But she explains how the marriage bar was so ingrained in the fabric of society of the time that it was seen as something natural, something women didn’t think to resist.

“It’s amazing what you get used to,” she said. “I did sometimes hear of people we regarded as a bit of a ‘hard chaw’. They got married on the QT, and never let on to anybody that they were engaged. It was a girl and a fellow from the office. It was known among the staff that they had gotten married, but they tried to brazen it out for as long as they could.”

Even though getting married and starting a family was seen as the primary social role for women, Marianne explains how Irish housewives were patronised to the point of almost becoming non-people.

“You’re not looking for recognition, but neither are you looking to be dumbed down. And we were dumbed down, we were cut off,” she said.

Marianne remembers one day, a few months after she was married, when a girl came to the door offering her a leaflet for a local dance for the “young at heart”.

“‘Young at heart’ … I was 20. That was the way you were seen when you were married, like you were tied to the kitchen sink. We weren’t proper people, we had no rights. We were really regarded as inferior humans, there was no doubt about it. And you just took it, because that was the mentality of the time.”

While a number of European countries had a marriage bar in the early 20th century, most were abolished by the 1950s. Ireland’s marriage bar was lifted in 1973 – which means it is one of the only countries in the world where many women affected are still alive.

By the time the bar was lifted, Marianne had three children, the youngest of whom was only six years old. She was “delighted” for the young women who would now have more control over their destiny than she ever had, but the opportunity to work wasn’t really available to her any more.

Her husband was working full time and she was consumed by caring responsibilities, not just within her home but in her church and her community.

“It’s not easy to just say goodbye to all of that, and go back to sitting at a desk,” she said.

Marianne has been a carer for generations. She cared for her own children and her husband, as well as her own parents. When her mother became ill, Marianne was there five days a week. She cared for her sister when she became terminally ill with cancer, and her sister’s children. And as she watched her grown daughter go out and work, enjoying a freedom that Marianne never had, Marianne cared for her grandchildren too.

“People like me have had our uses,” she said.

“It just occurred to me that there is a value there, to what we did, that is not recognised.”

The Department of Social Protection said it would be “difficult to identify all those whose entitlement to State Pension was affected by the marriage bar”.

Research by Maynooth University estimated in 2021 there could be 50,000 women in the State whose pensions were affected by the marriage bar.

“My daughter loved her work. I was denied that. And it gives a person… it uses your worth. When you have used your skills,” Marianne said, adding that being a mother you can “drift into the woodwork”.

For the past 30 years, Marianne and her husband have been living on his pension. She feels that the State should first of all recognise the wrong done to women forced out of work, and the major contribution that they made working for decades as homemakers.

“We still exist. We did not fall off the face of the Earth when we got married, as they seem to presume we did,” she said.

“I’m not craving anything. I do think that somebody, somewhere, should be blushing to the roots of their hair at the injustice done to women. And it is crying out for redress.

“I think that there is a case there to be answered, there is a case for redress there. Though I will probably never see it in my lifetime.”

“We still exist. We did not fall off the face of the Earth when we got married”