Hi °C | Lo °C A WOMAN was bribed by her father into making abuse allegations against her mother’s partner, it has been claimed at the Central Criminal Court.
John Paul Shortt SC, defending the 64-year-old accused, read from a number of social service reports dating back to 1999, when the woman’s mother first disclosed the alleged abuse.
One such report in 2002, states that the woman told social workers: “My father put me up to the allegations by bribing me. He (her father) was constantly following me around the place.”
The 31-year-old woman told Mr Shortt that she didn’t recall making the comment and said that the accused threatened her and told her to tell social workers her initial allegations were false.
She claimed that he made her tell social workers that her father was behind the allegations.
The woman didn’t accept a suggestion from counsel that his client never threatened her to make this comment and that he never abused her as she alleged.
“I am plagued by the memories of it. I can’t have a proper relationship with my partner because of it and our relationship is suffering,” the woman said.
“I didn’t choose for my mother to be in a relationship with him. I didn’t ask to be abused. I am here for me and my sisters to let people see that he did abuse us and he can’t get away with it anymore,” the woman said.
Mr Shortt told her that the only person who has been consistent in the case was his client, who has “been consistent in his denials”.
The man has pleaded not (NOT) guilty to 100 charges of sex assault and oral rape of four girls on dates between May 1989 and December 2006.
Bernard Condon SC, prosecuting, told the jury that allegations in relation to the oldest complainant involve the sexual abuse and oral rape of her from the age of eight to 21 years old.
Her young sister alleges she was also sexually abused and orally raped from the time she was five years old until she turned 20 years old.
Their two step-sisters also allege that they were each sexually abused and orally raped from the ages of seven to 14 years old and eight to 13 years old respectively.
Mr Condon told the jury in opening the case that the accused man started a relationship with the first two complainant’s mother after their parents separated.
Counsel said the accused and this woman then went on to have children of their own and it is alleged that he abused two of them.
The woman agreed with Mr Shortt that she had initially disclosed the abuse to her mother when she was about 17 and social services were informed.
A report in February 1999 stated that her mother made allegations to social services that the accused “interfered” with her daughter sexually since she was eight years old.
The eldest complainant gave evidence that said she, her siblings and her mother then moved back in with her father and she attended counselling for a few months.
She agreed with Mr Shortt that the family then moved back in with the accused three months later and she withdrew the allegations.
She said the man threatened her and told her to withdraw the allegations. He said if she continued with the accusations she would lose her family and end up in care.
She agreed that social worker’s reports at that time state that she told them she had been lying about the allegations.
She accepted she told them she didn’t mind moving back into the house because the accused had apologised and was treating the family well.
The woman further accepted that she told the social workers at that time that she was “glad” to be away from her father because he had been “annoying” her.
“Yes that is what he (the accused) told me to say and I was afraid of him,” the woman said.
When asked by counsel why “having made the break from the house” would she return to it, the woman said she wanted to protect her younger sisters and ensure the man was not abusing them.
She agreed that she left the house again following her Leaving Certificate but returned a few months later after a relationship in Dublin broke down.
Counsel suggested to her if things had been as bad as she had alleged “wild horses would not get you back in that house”.
“I regretted it but I had nowhere else to go,” the woman replied.
She further agreed that the allegation came out again in 2009 when her mother’s relationship with the accused broke down and she and her three sisters made statements to the gardai.
The woman accepted that some of her specific allegations, such as oral rape, which were detailed in her garda statement, were not contained in the initial social worker’s reports.
She said this is because she gets “flashbacks” and remembers more details of the abuse as she talks about it. She said this happened while she was making her garda statement.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Barry White and a jury of six men and six women.
