This article is from page 83 of the 2008-06-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 83 JPG
A COUNTY Clare man has been given a twelve year sentence for sexu- ally abusing his two daughters in a County Offaly townland.
The 36-year-old was convicted by a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury last November, on 10 charges of sexually assaulting them, on dates between September 2001 and De- cember 2004.
The jury returned the guilty ver-
dicts by an 11-1 majority and acquit- ted him on one count following the 14-day trial.
He had been sentenced at the Cen- tral Criminal Court in 1993 to ten years for aggravated sexual assault and burglary and served four years of that term. Judge Desmond Hogan noted his “high-risk of reoffending”’ and imposed a twelve years sentence on each of the ten counts in relation to his daughters, all to run concurrently. He suspended the final two years on
condition he receives sexual offend- ers treatment on release.
“These offences are extremely se- rious and were perpetrated on two young, innocent and vulnerable chil- dren, who were taken advantage of by a father who breached the protection and trust they were entitled to re- ceive, not only as children but as his children,’ said the judge last Friday.
He commended the girls’ mother for acting in “a proper and appropri- ate way in relation to these things”.
Defense counsel, Gerard Groarke BL had asked that sentencing be ad- journed to a later date so the man’s sisters could be in court to which Judge Hogan replied: “I am restrain- ing myself from showing severe irri- tation here.”
‘What difference is it going to make if his sisters are here or not over and above the anguish experienced by the victims?” he asked.
Judge Hogan also rejected a claim that the man was unable to meet with
probation officers because they had tried to visit someone else with the Same name in Wheatfield Prison.
He accepted the prison officers’ ac- count that the man had in fact refused to meet the Probation Service on the occasions when they visited him.
The trial was the first to have had video recorded interviews. It allowed the younger daughter to be inter- viewed informally in a playroom by a psychiatrist and for this to be then played back to the jury.