WARNING – DISTRESSING CONTENT: The woman has told court she lived with her grandfather, grandmother, aunt, uncle and mother at the time and that she always shared a bed with her mother
A woman has told a jury that she was raped by her uncle just before her sixth birthday while her own mother stood in the room and watched.
The shocking testimony was given by a now 27-year-old woman, speaking out against her mother, uncle and another man, who face a total of 21 counts of sexual assault and rape, which allegedly occurred on dates between 2000 and 2014 mainly at a location in Co. Mayo, Ireland. They can’t be named for legal reasons.
She told the court that after the rape her mother lifted her from the bed in her uncle’s bedroom and moved her into a bed in another room. The woman said she lived with her grandfather, grandmother, aunt, uncle and mother at the time and that she always shared a bed with her mother, the Irish Mirror reports.
Her mother, 51, has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of sexual assault, and not guilty to one count of rape. It is alleged that the woman sexually assaulted the girl on nine occasions between 2000 and 2009 at the family home in Co. Mayo, on one occasion between 2012 and 2014 and on three occasions during a family holiday in Co. Kerry in 2001.
Her uncle, 45, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of rape and one of oral rape on dates between 2003 and 2012. Another man, 52, pleaded not guilty to one count of oral rape between 2008 and 2009 at the same address in Co. Mayo. The jury heard he was a friend of the woman’s then partner.
The woman told the court her first memory of sexual abuse was when she was three and half years old when her mother “sort of guided” her into performing oral sex on her. “She was in bed with me. Neither of us had any clothes on us. She was saying something quietly but I don’t know what she was saying. I don’t know how long I did it for,” she told the jury.
She recalled further incidents in which her mother sexually assaulted her and said two of the incidences occurred while they were on a family holiday in Kerry. The woman also described an incident when she was 11 years old and her mother’s then partner’s friend – the third accused – came into a room while she was playing on a games console. She said he locked the door and beckoned her to come over to him, she said he told her “your mother knows”.
The woman told Ms Lawlor that she took it that this meant that her mother knew what was happening or what was going to happen. She also told the jury of other incidences when her uncle raped her, she recalled being about 11 years old at the time.
The woman told the jury of a period she had once when she was 13 years old, which she now believes was actually a miscarriage. She said: “I never experienced anything like it since. The bleeding was very, very heavy and there were like clumps. It was extremely painful.”
She said the last time her mother molested her she was 15 years old and her mother was pregnant. Referring to her life growing up in the house, the woman said “everyone drank heavily”, her grandfather, her grandmother, her aunt and her mother. She said there was “always violence in the house”.
“Literally physically fighting with each other” she said and recalled one incident when a frosted glass panel in the door of her bedroom was broken into her room during a fight. “I tried to keep away from it (the fighting),” she said and added she didn’t think anyone was violent towards her. She said she would hide and try to keep away from it.
She said one time they were in the living room and her mother was drunk. “She knocked us both down and I ended up falling on to the ground on my shoulder,” the woman told the jury. “That went of for years and years. At no point did the drinking ever stop,” the woman said. The woman said she moved out of the family home fully when she was 18 years old.
She said at that point her mother had several children with her partner and she was often left minding these children. The woman said she didn’t speak to gardaí at that time because she was terrified of gardaí. She said the last time she saw her mother was when she was 20 years old when she and her mother’s partner visited her where she was living at the time.
The trial continues before Justice Melanie Greally and a jury.