The High Court has awarded €200,000 to a woman who sued a family member over two alleged sexual assaults during her childhood, finding on the balance of probabilities that both incidents occurred and caused her serious personal injuries.
In a judgment delivered on 25 July 2018, Ms Justice O’Hanlon accepted the plaintiff’s account of an assault in 2002, when she was 13, and an earlier incident in 1994, when she was six. The court found that the 2002 incident involved oral rape and that the earlier incident involved digital penetration and rape. The defendant denied the allegations.
The plaintiff’s younger brother gave evidence that, when he was eight, he saw the defendant on top of his sister during the 2002 incident. He also said the defendant punched him in the stomach and told him not to speak about what he had seen. The judge accepted his evidence in full and found it corroborated the plaintiff’s account. The court also noted that the defendant’s current wife confirmed many details of the children’s weekend visit, while denying that any assault occurred.
The plaintiff said she did not disclose the incidents for years because she feared damaging family relationships. The court accepted that explanation and found her evidence convincing and internally consistent. It rejected the defence contention that she was unreliable or had given false or misleading evidence.
Psychiatrists called by the parties disagreed about the plaintiff’s diagnosis and whether her symptoms were attributable to the assaults. The judge preferred the evidence of Dr Paul McQuaid, who had assessed the plaintiff over several years, while noting that she did not currently have symptoms meeting the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. The court found that the 2002 incident triggered recovered memories of the 1994 assault.
The judgment records that the case had been delayed for years and that the plaintiff described the delay as an additional strain. The judge attributed a substantial part of the delay to the defendant’s efforts to obtain legal aid. The court concluded that the assaults had severe consequences for the plaintiff and awarded her €200,000 in damages. The judgment does not set out a separate breakdown of that award.