‘Monster’ (59) is jailed for raping partner’s baby niece ::

Father of five gets 16 years after recording himself abusing infant

A FATHER of five who raped his partner’s six-month-old baby niece and subjected her to a “violent and degrading sexual assault” has been jailed for 16 years.

The Tipperary man (59) recorded himself abusing the baby and also secretly recorded four other girls when they used the bathroom.

Sentencing the man today, Mr Justice Alexander Owens, of the Central Criminal Court, said that while it was open to him to impose a life sentence on the man, he considered a very long custodial sentence would be more proportionate.

He handed down a sentence of 18 years but suspended the final two years on a number of conditions.

The man cannot be named in order to protect the identities of the victims.

The offending took place over the course of seven months up to August 2019.

A local detective previously told Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, that an envelope was delivered anonymously to a garda station on August 14, 2019, which contained a memory card and a handwritten note.

The handwritten note outlined that the memory card contained a clip of an infant being sexually abused by the accused man and asked gardaí to arrest “this monster”.

The court heard that the accused man had been in a relationship with a woman since 2012 and the couple would look after her nieces from time to time in the defendant’s flat.

The woman told gardaí that she would occasionally leave the man alone with the young children if she was going to the shops and said she was unaware of events that had taken place. She said the accused had a “pattern” of checking whether the toilet was clean before the children used it.

The man pleaded guilty last year to two counts of oral rape, one count of attempted oral rape and five counts of sexual assault of the then six-monthold baby.

He also pleaded guilty to five counts of production of images of extreme child abuse of the baby and the four older children. He further pleaded guilty to four counts of possession of images of child abuse at his home on dates from February to August 2019.

In an emotional victim impact statement, one mother said she was introduced to the accused man seven years ago and welcomed him into their family home.

She said she could not believe that the man had done

“such horrific things” to her daughters and was grateful that they are young enough to move on with their lives.

She said she no longer leaves her children with anyone and knows that she will have to explain to them what happened some day. “He is a monster and is where he should be today,” she said.

Another mother told the court that she had trusted the accused and thought he had her children’s best interests at heart. “In my worst nightmare I could never have imagined it.”

Colman Cody SC, defending, said the level of criminality was impossible to comprehend and the aggravating factors included the disparity in ages between his client and the victims as well as the breach of trust. In mitigation, he said his client became addicted to cocaine and it had become a destabilising factor in his life. He said his client accepted he would receive a serious custodial sentence.

‘He is a monster and is where he should be today’