A cross-dressing Donegal man who subjected his step-granddaughter to a series of vile incidents has been jailed.
William ‘Bill’ Quinn was handed a five-year prison sentence, with the final 12 months suspended, when he appeared before Letterkenny Circuit Court.
The victim in the case – who was between nine and 10 years old when the incidents occurred – bravely waived her anonymity meaning that Quinn can now be unmasked.
Quinn, who was married to the victim’s grandmother at the time, forced her to watch as he performed sexual acts on himself while dressed in woman’s clothing.
Quinn warned the young girl to keep the “secret” and gave her money and presents as a reward for staying silent. He also told her that she could go to jail or members of her family could be killed if she told anyone.
When the girl confided in her mother, the matter was reported to An Garda Síochána in 2020.
The now 65-year-old Quinn, with an address at Rossgier, Lifford, was charged with a total of 16 offences – two of sexual exploitation and 14 of sexual assault. He pleaded guilty to three sample charges – two of sexual assault and one of child exploitation – which were acceptable to the DPP on a full facts basis.
In passing sentencing, Judge John Aylmer said that Quinn was in a position of trust and his actions constituted a “gross breach of trust” in his role as a step-grandfather to her.
Judge Aylmer said that the incidents were “undoubtedly of a highly-sexualised nature”.
He noted that Quinn told the girl that she would be put in jail if she told anyone and bribed her with “hush money”.
“She feels that you robbed her of her childhood,” Judge Aylmer told Quinn.
He pleaded guilty to two charges that he sexually assaulted the woman by masturbating in front of her while crossdressing while at the same time touching or rubbing his body.
The charges are contrary to section 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amendment) Act 1990 as amended by section 37 of the Sexual Offenders Act.
He also entered a guilty plea to a charge of the sexual exploitation of a child. This charge is contrary to section 3 (2) (b) of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act, 1998 as amended by section 6 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) (Amendment) Act 2007 and as substituted by section 3 (2) of the Criminal Law (Human Trafficking) Act 2008.
At a previous sitting of the court, Garda Liam McBride outlined the details of the case to state prosecutor Ms Fiona Crawford BL.
The girl initially conveyed details of the incidents to her mother when telling her in a message: “Mammy, I don’t know how to tell you…I don’t know why I didn’t tell you sooner.” In the same message, she outlined some of the incidents she was subjected to.
The young girl was subsequently interviewed by specialist Garda investigators and detailed a number of incidents, which occurred when she would come home from school.
The man would bring over some items of the grandmother’s clothes, while he also put on the young girl’s clothing, the court heard.
She told gardai how the offending would make her feel “uncomfortable” and recalled how Quinn would change into different clothing, which she described as “anything he could get his hands on that wasn’t for men”.
In a moving victim impact statement, which was read to the court by Garda McBride, the complainant, who was present in court, said she is a victim of child grooming.
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“I am still discovering all the ways that grooming hurts me,” he said. “It destroyed my childhood, my teenage years and my early adulthood. I thought it was okay as I thought he was family and I could trust him.”
The woman suffers from “severe flashbacks” and was unable to concentrate in school while she was “in and out of depressing thinking it was my fault”.
“It has left my head completely messed up,” she said. “I have severe anxiety and I can’t go anywhere by myself. I don’t know what I would do if I was ever face-to-face with him again.”
She added: “I didn’t get to live my childhood. I had to mature too early and act as if everything was okay.”
She said she “hates that man so much for how he messed with my head” and she lives in “constant fear” that she will bump into the man.
Mr Eugene Grant SC, barrister for Quinn, with Ms Maddie Grant BL and instructed by solicitor Mr Conor Moylan, said his client has a previously “exemplary” background.
He said that his client understood what he was pleading guilty to and said that Quinn lost employment following the emergence of the charges.
“At all times, I have had a consistent and full acceptance of the complainant’s allegations within the four walls of this case,”
Mr Grant said, “He is a monosyllabic person and may not communicate clearly with people discussing such sensitive matters. There is insight.”
Mr Grant told the court that Quinn had continuously referred back to his own experience, which could indicate a reluctance regarding victim empathy. The Probation Service previously noted a question mark over Quinn accepting “specific elements” of his offending.
Mr Grant said his client had suffered sexual abuse himself at the hands of two adults, a male and a female, when he was a young adolescent, which had a “seismic effect on his whole life”.
Mr Grant added: “The fact that he consistently referred back to a 50-year-old issue, which has contaminated his whole life, is not lacking empathy for what he did.”
The court heard that Quinn had been himself subjected to cross-dressing as a teenager.
Having got married at 17, Quinn’s marriage lasted only from 1977 to 1981.
He asked Judge Aylmer to give Quinn credit for an early plea and said his client “lives in shame”, while he had a good working record and was in a “very positive relationship”.
Judge Aylmer said he placed the offending in the mid-range and merited a starting point for sentencing of six years in prison.
Judge Aylmer noted that Quinn came before him with no previous criminal history or convictions and made a late plea, which was considered valuable in that it spared the complainant the ordeal of a trial.
Apart from this, which he described as an “appalling aberration”, he said Quinn had lived a pro-social life and had a good work history.
The court heard that Quinn suffered from sexual abuse himself and was made to wear women’s clothing.
“While that is all in explanation as to how you came to be interested in cross-dressing and how you came to the offending, it does not in any sense excuse it,” Judge Aylmer said.
Quinn was placed as being at a moderate risk of reoffending by the Probation Service.
Judge Aylmer reduced the sentences to five years on each count, suspending the final 12 months of that sentence on condition that he enter a bond to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for 12 months following his release.
Quinn must also go under the supervision of the Probation Service for a year after his release and was told to engage in appropriate interventions to address dynamic risk factors that had been identified.
As Judge Aylmer handed down the sentence, Quinn stood with his hands clasped before being led away by prison officers to begin his term behind bars.