Tipperary courts: victims tell of emotional trauma caused by indecent assaults as children

Both victims told the court in their Victim Impact Statements that the abuse they suffered had had long lasting effects on them.

The younger sister said she had not even made her Communion when the abuse started.

“As I got older I blamed myself and I felt dirty and ashamed. Even to this day I hate being alone and at times I find myself frozen with fear and I'm back in that shed with him whispering in my ear,” she said.

She now had low self-esteem and no confidence in herself.

“I thought coming forward and making a complain would help me but it had the opposite effect. I find myself paralysed with fear,” she said.

The woman said she had to move out of the area because she was afraid of seeing the defendant.

She had lost her relationship with her mother because of her mother's fear of people finding out about the abuse.

She did not accept the defendant's apology, saying if he was genuine he had had “thousands of opportunities” to do so over the years.

“The use of language in the apology states 'our sexual encounters'. This statement has made me very angry. There is no our. You took advantage of me and stole my innocence, my happiness and my childhood. This was all you,” she said.

Her sister said that the effect of the abuse had made her feel that men could do what they like to females and “we must be men pleasers”.

“My education, my emotional health, my ability to have a loving and normal sexual relationship and my life was ruined. I would have abused alcohol in an effort to forget,” she said.

But she learned that forgetting was wrong and now led a happy and fulfilling life, “but will always be emotionally scarred”.

She said her abuser's apology had “turned my stomach”.

She asked that the man spend time in jail to send out the right message.