Two brothers who sexually assaulted teenage girls in the mid-1990s can now be identified for the first time.
John Owens (72) of Cois Abhainn, Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath, was jailed last February for eight years after pleading guilty to nine counts of sexual assault of three teenage girls. He could not be identified at the time because his brother, Martin Owens (66), was facing trial in April for sexual assaults of one of these victims as well as a fourth victim.
On April 13th last, Martin Owens of Greenville, Dublin Road, Castlepollard, Co Westmeath, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to sexually assaulting Deirdre Boyhan and Lorraine Kiernan on dates in 1994 and 1996. Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to four more counts of sexually assaulting Deirdre Boyhan on dates in 1994 and 1995.
John Owens pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court last December to nine sample counts of sexual assault on dates between July 1992 and November 1996 of Boyhan, Sinéad Nally and Aoife O’Dwyer.
The court heard he would repeatedly molest the girls whenever he got them alone. He invited one girl to take alcohol but she refused it and would also give her presents of naggins of vodka.
The victims, two of whom were sisters, were aged 14 to 17 and were babysitting for Owens’s children.
Sentencing Martin Owens on Monday, Judge Tony Hunt said Owens had groomed the victims and, in the case of Boyhan, plied the child with alcohol.
He said Martin Owens was a trusted employer in a well-known local business who had engaged in the sexual exploitation of two children who had put their trust in him.
He said these were not impulsive or youthful acts but were the actions of a mature person who would undoubtedly know what he was doing was wrong. He said Owens carefully created circumstances in which he could get access to the victims.
He imposed a sentence of five years and six months with the final six months suspended for three years on condition that he keep the peace and be of good behaviour.
Boyhan told the court that Martin Owens “used me as a child for his own sexual gratification”. She said the repeated sexual assaults left an “indelible mark” on her of “a stress far beyond my capacity to understand”.
She said that all his life Martin Owens has worn a mask of a hardworking businessman and family man but that a paedophilic sexual predator lay behind this mask.
“I survived this sexual abuse by making myself silent. I am handing back the shame, the guilt, the responsibility,” she said.
Kieran (44), a mother of four, told the court that when she was asked to babysit for the Owenses she felt proud to be considered mature enough to do the job. She said the sexual assault left her frightened and utterly confused and embarrassed and she has never forgotten it.
“I thought that I had done something to attract his unwanted attention,” she said in a victim-impact report. She said he scared her and for the next five days she made sure she was never alone with him again.
She described how the child abuse endured by her sister affected their relationship. She said she felt completely numb when Boyhan told her in 2023 about this abuse.
At the sentencing hearing of John Owens last February, Judge Eileen Creedon said the defendant targeted the victims and his acts were gross violations, which took place on a continuous and extremely frequent basis. She said the abuse had caused the survivors “mental trauma” and noted they each felt “grief for the lives they would have lived” otherwise.
She set a headline total sentence of 15 years which she reduced to a total sentence of eight years to take account of the mitigating factors, in particular the guilty pleas.
Nally told the court she was an innocent 14-year-old girl with no sexual knowledge and could not understand what was happening to her with John Owens.
She said she did not have the confidence to tell anyone and felt like she had betrayed her abuser’s wife. She said she spent her life hiding the secret of the abuse and found it very hard to trust men.
She said it would be great for victims if it did not take so long for cases such as this to get to trial and described the waiting and not knowing as an “awful ordeal to go through”.
O’Dwyer said Owens “violated my body, my privacy and my choice to say ‘no’”.
“You manipulated and groomed me. I believed I was worthless, a piece of used goods, dirty and disgusting. You continued to live your life, taking no responsibly,” she said.
She said for three decades she wore a smile that masked the trauma she bore while John Owens “waltzed around the place like you were lord of the manor”.
“Today I give you back the fear, the horror. You are a monster, an abuser, a sex offender,” she added.
Det Garda Aidan Hynes of the Westmeath divisional protective services unit gave evidence that he was assigned to investigate allegations against the two men in May 2023 after Boyhan came forward. He said John Owens owned a quarry business in Mullingar, which he had taken over from his uncle.
Fionnuala O’Sullivan SC, defending, told the court that Martin Owens accepted full responsibility and apologised for all his actions.
“He now understands in light of his age and the position he was in that what he did was completely inappropriate,” she said.
Seán Guerin SC, defending John Owens, told the court last February that the defendant had offered €20,000 to each of the three victims as a token of his remorse. This has been accepted, he said.
Two people connected with John Owens’s businesses provided character references attesting to his otherwise good character. The referees said they knew John Owens as a man of integrity and compassion who was very well respected and highly thought of as a decent man.
The two men were originally set to face trial together but their legal teams successfully applied for separate trials.
After sentence was passed on Monday, Vincent Heneghan SC, prosecuting, told the court that the victims of both brothers wished to waive their right to anonymity so that the Owens could be identified publicly.