Serial child abuser jailed for 11 years for the relentless and constant abuse of his young cousin

By Declan Brennan

A serial child abuser who subjected his younger cousin to relentless and constant abuse for four years has received an eleven-year prison sentence.

The 61-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, was convicted after a trial at the Central Criminal Court last May of seven counts of rape and six counts of indecent assault at  his flat in Dublin city in the nineties.

The boy was aged from ten in 1991 when the abuse began and his abuser was 20 years older.

The attacks involved oral and anal rapes and continued until 1997 when the victim told the man to stop.

Sentencing the man this morning, Justice Eileen Creedon said that the abuse was an egregious breach of trust and dereliction of the man’s duty of care to the child.

She suspended the final six months of an eleven-year prison term and imposed a five year period of post release supervision during which the man should engage with assessments for sex offender treatment programmes.

At a sentence hearing last July, Eileen O’Leary SC, prosecuting, told the court that the victim went to gardai as an adult and told them that his older cousin had carried out “relentless and constant” sexual assaults on him between 1991 and 1997, with a break of three years when the victim lived away from the defendant.

“He was raped anally maybe 50 times a year,” counsel said.

She said the victim’s parents were alcoholics and he had a fractured home life which was characterised by neglect with all of the man’s siblings going into care at one stage.

The victim’s cousin would give the victim money and tell him he was his best friend and that the abuse was “our secret and to tell nobody”.

The victim later told gardai that “he didn’t know any better and just went along with it”.

The man denies the offending.

He is already serving a seven-year prison term, imposed in June 2020, for the multiple sexual assaults on four girls at his flat in Dublin on dates beginning in May 1994 and ending in February 2001.

Justice Creedon noted the fact that the man does not accept the jury verdict and has shown no remorse or offered no apology to the victim.

Ms O’Leary told the court that the victim, who is now in his 40s, still found it difficult to talk about the abuse.

He did not complete a victim impact statement but the trial heard that he found recalling the abuse disturbing and upsetting.

Counsel said that the position of the Director of Public Prosecutions was that the case lay in the more serious range of rape cases, given the youth of the victim, the familial relationship and breach of trust, and the multiple offending.

She also told the court that the defendant has shown no remorse for his offending.

Lawyers defending the man told the court that the man had a troubled childhood featuring domestic violence and sexual abuse at the hands of his father.

The court heard the man later spent time in State institutions where he suffered further sexual abuse.

Justice Creedon said she took these mitigating factors into consideration.

She noted as aggravating factors the relentless nature of the abuse and its duration over four years, the victim’s young age and the disparity in age between him and the abuser.