Father loses appeal over rape of nine-year-old daughter

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

A 59-year-old father jailed for 14 years for repeatedly raping his nine-year-old daughter lost his conviction appeal at the Court of Appeal on 10 October 2024. Mr Justice John Edwards rejected the appeal. The man cannot be named to protect his daughter's identity.

A jury convicted him of 11 offences following a Central Criminal Court trial in November 2022. They included rape, oral rape, sexual assault, false imprisonment, threatening to kill and forcing a child to watch sexual activity.

Lorcan Staines SC, prosecuting, told the court that the abuse took place in the family home in the Midlands between December 2019 and April 2020. The court heard that the man told his daughter the Bible says a child must do what their father says, and threatened to kill her and other family members if she told anyone, while showing her a knife.

The man denied the claims and continued to deny wrongdoing. He told gardaí that the child's mother, from whom he was estranged, had made up the claims to turn his children against him.

The Court of Appeal found no basis for his claim of possible collusion between the complainant and other witnesses. His counsel, Garnet Orange SC, argued that the trial judge had erred in several respects, including by refusing to stop the trial after the prosecution case and failing to direct immediate disclosure of family communications.

Mr Justice Edwards said he was not persuaded that the trial judge had erred in refusing to withdraw the case from the jury. He said it was speculative whether records of messages between witnesses might have contained material communications, and that delays in the complainant reporting to gardaí did not require the case to be withdrawn.