80-year-old man jailed for indecently assaulting his two daughters

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

An 80-year-old man was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for indecently assaulting his two daughters in County Clare. Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy backdated the sentence to 15 June 2014 and ordered his registration as a sex offender.

The proceedings were reported on 16 January 2015. He was found guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault after a week-long trial at the Central Criminal Court in December 2014. He cannot be named to protect his victims’ anonymity.

He had pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of indecently assaulting his older daughter. Those charges concerned unknown dates between January 1971 and December 1973, in a house and later a caravan in County Clare. She was aged between 11 and 13.

He also denied indecently assaulting his younger daughter twice. Those charges concerned a caravan in County Clare in 1980, when she was aged 11 or 12. During the trial, he made admissions to one of those offences. Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said he was effectively treating that admission as a guilty plea. The man was found not guilty of the second count concerning his younger daughter.

The judge described the abuse of the older daughter as being at the most serious end of the scale and involving a fundamental breach of trust of a particularly vulnerable child. He described the offence against the younger daughter as a grave breach of trust, falling in the middle range of seriousness.

The man had no previous convictions. Michael Bowman SC, defending, said he had done his best to provide maintenance for his children. The judge said age was the only mitigating factor, but it was not significant because the man seemed healthy.