Man who raped his wife and sexually abused his sister jailed for 13 years

A man who sexually abused his sister as a child and went on to regularly rape his wife in a “rough, humiliating and brutish fashion” has been jailed for 13 years.

The 55-year-old Munster man made no reaction as the sentence was handed down by Mr Justice Paul McDermott at the Central Criminal Court on Monday.

He had pleaded guilty to eight sample counts of indecently assaulting his younger sister and three counts of raping her at their family home between 1978 and 1987.

The man also stood trial at Central Criminal Court last November charged with 16 sample counts of anally raping his wife at their home between 2003 and 2007. He was found guilty of all counts by a jury. He continues to deny raping his wife.

The court heard the man started sexually abusing his sister when she was nine and he was 13. He orally raped his younger sister for the final time when she was 17.

Mr Justice McDermott said the man abused his sister in a “humiliating and degrading way”. He said the later abuse, which occurred when the man was an adult, was carried out in a “calculated, cynical and brutal way”.

“He repeatedly raped his victim when she pleaded with him not to,” the judge said.

He said the man displayed “a viciousness towards his wife, the mother of his children”. He showed a “callous indifference to her emotional welfare” and took advantage of her when she was vulnerable.

The judge said there was little by way of mitigation on this offending, as the man had not pleaded guilty and continued to deny his offending.

He took into account mitigating factors including that the man was allegedly sexually abused by two neighbours when he was a child and was physically abused by his father.

The judge imposed a sentence of seven years in relation to the offences against the sister and six years in relation to the wife. He ordered them to run consecutively.

He also imposed a post-release supervision order of three years upon the man’s release, placing him under the supervision of the probation service.

He ordered the man to have no contact, directly or indirectly, with his victims.

The man’s sister, in a victim impact statement she read to the court, said she could not understand what kind of man thought it was okay to rape his baby sister and make her perform oral sex on him out of fear.

“He crossed the line of sister and brother for his own sick satisfaction,” she said.

She described how he had made her feel insecurity, anxiety, shame and bullied her at every opportunity.

She outlined how the abuse had affected her life and she lost contact “with so called family.” She said her mother “supports her paedophile son over her daughter who was raped”.

She said if she could go back in time she would give the small helpless child she was a big hug and tell her the truth would set her free and everything will be all right. “The boogey man is gone,” she said.

The man’s former wife, in her victim impact statement, described how she had been a vulnerable teenager having come from a dysfunctional family and the man had presented himself as her saviour. They married when she was 18 and he was 28.

She said it was a “devastating discovery” to subsequently find out the accused man had gone from abusing one teenage girl to another. “I was nothing more than his second victim,” said the woman.

“He sadistically heightened his own sexual pleasure by inflicting on me the most excruciating pain,” she said.

Describing physical and emotional abuse during her marriage, she told the court: “What I suffered during those years is beyond my ability to describe.”

“There are times when the feeling of horror reaches such intensity I feel unable to keep going on,” she said.

She described how at times when her own survival had been in danger she was saved by the love of her children, who rescued her from despair.

The woman said she had found the trial process horrendous but hoped the action she had taken in bringing her abuser to justice would encourage other women to vindicated their human rights.