A garda has gone on trial accused of child cruelty of his children and the rape of his wife.<\/p>\n
The jury at the Central Criminal Court heard the 48-year-old man was allegedly \u201ca violent and domineering father and husband\u201d who subjected two of his daughters to \u201cunreasonable chastisement\u201d for most of their childhood.<\/p>\n
On day one of the trial, Dominic McGinn, prosecuting, told the jury the man was alleged to have subjected his eldest daughter to neglect for most of her childhood.<\/p>\n
He is charged with child cruelty against her on unknown dates between 2007 and 2013 and between 2013 and 2020.<\/p>\n
He is also alleged to have assaulted her, causing harm, in late 2021 or early 2022 after she had turned 18.<\/p>\n
The man is also charged with child cruelty of another daughter on an unknown date between 2015 and 2024.<\/p>\n
The man, who has a legal entitlement to anonymity, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of raping his wife in June 2009 and November 2021. He has further pleaded not guilty to the three counts of child cruelty and the single count of assault causing harm.<\/p>\n
All the alleged offending took place at two locations, which were the family homes at the time.<\/p>\n
McGinn told the jury the prosecution evidence would be that the two rape allegations were against an alleged background of the accused demanding sex much more than his wife was comfortable with.<\/p>\n
He said the evidence of the child complainants would be there was \u201can atmosphere of fear and suppressed \u2013 and sometimes expressed \u2013 violence\u201d in the family home. <\/p>\n
McGinn said that these two complainants were particularly targeted by the accused and were subjected to \u201cverbal anger and unreasonable chastisement\u201d almost constantly throughout their childhood.<\/p>\n
The allegations came to light via a referral from Tusla regarding a younger child. During the Tusla assessment, the child\u2019s mother was interviewed and \u201cshe revealed she had been raped\u201d, McGinn said.<\/p>\n
In evidence, the man\u2019s former wife told the court they met in 2004 and married in 2007, having lived together for a year. She said while on honeymoon in 2007 the accused asked to have sex up against the window of their hotel room and she said no as she was afraid of being seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer and he pushed me towards the window. I was in shock. I told him I had begun my cycle,\u201d she said. They did not have sex and there was no other conversation about it.<\/p>\n
She said that before this incident there had been no issues in the relationship. She said there was a lot of control in the marriage.<\/p>\n
She said there was constant pressure to have sex. <\/p>\n
The woman said the atmosphere in the house became very tense. She said she began saying no to him more frequently.<\/p>\n
She said she told him he had \u201cserious anger issues\u201d. She told the jury the accused had once told her he had been sent for anger management therapy in Templemore garda training college.<\/p>\n
She said the couple tried marriage counselling, but \u201cit didn\u2019t work out\u201d and in June 2021 she decided to leave, taking the children and moving into a relative\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
The woman said she tried desperately to find somewhere to live, but couldn\u2019t afford anything and in November 2021 moved back in with her husband.<\/p>\n
She said in the weeks that followed there was an incident where the accused raped her in an upstairs room. <\/p>\n
She said that afterwards she was shocked and felt numb and decided that was the end of the marriage. <\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A garda has gone on trial accused of child cruelty of his children and the rape of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42851,51250,42,43,40,38,41,39,53],"class_list":["post-526358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-central-criminal-court","tag-criminal-courts","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tusla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}