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A man who raped his 15-year-old niece in a car has been jailed for 9 years.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was also ordered to leave the jurisdiction for a period of 10 years on completion of his sentence, the Roscommon Herald reports.
The court heard that the man has promised to give the girl a lift home but had instead parked in car in an isolated area before getting into the back seat and raping her.
When the girl began to scream the man told her, “You are screaming for no reason; there is no point screaming as there is no one here who can hear you.”
The incident came to light after a train of events in which Gardaí became suspicious of a car parked in an unlit area in County Roscommon in November 2017.
They approached the vehicle and found the man inside with the girl, whom he had raped shorty before the they arrived on the scene.
The man instructed the girl to tell the Gardaí that she was his daughter when he saw the squad car lights approaching.
While speaking to the man, Gardaí felt uncomfortable thinking he was watching the girl and instructed him to take her home, following his car to see where they went.
The man threatened the girl not to tell anyone what he had done to her on the way to her home.
Gardaí went back to the address where the girl was taken afterwards and spoke to her although at that time she did not tell them she had been raped. A disclosure was made in 2019.
Although several attempts were made to find out what was upsetting the girl, who began to self harm after the rape, she initially concealed what had happened but eventually told a friend that a boy had raped her.
The friend, who noticed that the girl would become uneasy when they saw her uncle, did not believe this but did not pressure the girl not wanting to upset her further.
After some time the girl revealed to a social worker that she had been raped by her uncle with the court hearing that the victim could no longer cope with “him calling me a whore”.
She said she was “sick of them calling me names, sick of it all”.
Gardaí launched an investigation in April 2019 and the uncle was arrested in early 2020.
The man left Ireland but was returned via a European arrest warrant and was taken into custody last year.
The Central Criminal Court convicted the man, who maintains his innocence, of rape earlier this month.
Sentencing judge Mr. Justice Tony Hunt handed the man a sentence of 12-years before reducing this to nine on mitigation.
Factors such as the man’s very poor English which was considered to make prison life more difficult for him, that he has almost no connections here, that he has a history of engaging in difficult work, and that he has no previous convictions.
Judge Hunt further ordered that he have no contact with the victim and that he leave Ireland for a period of 10 years on completion of his nine year sentence.
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