A woman has told the Central Criminal Court that from the age of 12 to 18 she was raped and abused by three brothers at least three to four times a week.
The 36-year-old woman also told the court that her own father was the father of her eldest child.
The woman is one of four people to say she was raped and sexually abused as a child by members of her extended family between 1999 and 2005.
Her three brothers, aged 37, 40 and 41, are accused of repeatedly raping the woman as a child, reports RTE.
Although they deny the allegations.
Warning: The details in this report may be disturbing to some readers
Her 66-year-old father is accused of twice raping another woman, her granddaughter.
He is also accused of raping one of his nephews 20 times and assaulting the same nephew.
The woman’s 63-year-old mother was accused of helping the perpetrator and assaulting two of the applicants, reports RTE.
A total of 126 charges are before the court. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The jury was told that the defendant and the applicants were all part of the same extended family, which were also members of the travelling community.
The 36-year-old woman told the court her family moved a lot when she was a child.
She said she rarely went to school and could not read.
She said she didn’t know how old she was until she received her birth certificate years ago.
She reported on some of the places she had lived in trailers with her parents and siblings over the years, mostly roadside locations in the west and east of the country.
She identified several locations in photographs compiled by Gardaí and told the court, “my father and my brothers used to have sex with me there”, reports RTE.
The woman said she was around seven or eight years old when her father started touching her and around 11 when he started having sex with her.
That happened mostly every day, she said, in a trailer or a car.
She said “you’d be too afraid to say no”, as “you’d get a beating”, reports RTE.
She described being hit by anything her father had in his hands, mentioning “machine stick” which she believed was a machine used to clean chimneys.
She told the court that her father was the father of her oldest child, who was born when the woman was 18.
She said she found out she was pregnant when she went to the doctor because she was very sick with the flu, reports RTE.
Her child was born about two months later and was raised by her mother, she said.
She told prosecutor Shane Costelloe that she contacted the Gardai in 2015 to obtain evidence regarding the circumstances of the child’s birth.
She said she did so because she “didn’t want the rest of the kids to go through what I went through”, reports RTE.
When asked if her father was “the only one” who did this, the woman replied that she had “three more brothers that did the same – rape and abuse”, reports RTE.
They had sex with her, she said when she didn’t want to.
The woman said it was hard to put into words.
She said the incidents with her now 41-year-old brother happened when she was about 12 or 13 and started when he drove with her in the car.
She said it happened on “loads of occasions,” three or four times a week. She said this continued until she turned 18.
She then said that her brother, who is now 40 years old, started doing the same thing to her, and after that her brother was now 37 years old, reports RTE.
When asked if she made any attempt to stop her, she said she did once to the younger brother, but was hit in the jaw, nose and eye.
When cross-examined by Senior Counsel James McGowan on behalf of her 41-year-old brother, the woman agreed that she was aware that claims for damages had been made by relatives of another family member in prison.
The woman said she received compensation from the HSE about a year ago for her years of treatment.
But she said no amount of money in the world would bring back her childhood.
Her lawyer told the court that the money was for her children’s future, and that is why she did it.
Mr McGowan also pointed out that although she testified that no one else was present when her brothers abused her, she stated in a statement in 2016 that two of her sisters were in the caravan when it happened.
She said sometimes there are other people there.
The woman agreed that there was a lot of violence in the house and that her father beat her like dogs, reports RTE.
Under cross-examination by lead counsel Dominic McGinn on behalf of her 37-year-old brother, the woman denied making up allegations of sexual abuse against him because he was also violent towards her.
When Mr McGinn pointed out to her that this brother had never sexually abused her. She said he did do that to her.
When Mr O’Loughlin suggested that her 40-year-old brother could not have abused her as he was allegedly not living with the family at the time, she said he would always come back if there was a fight with his partner.
She also denied telling the Tusla Children and Families Agency that she planned to give the eldest child to her mother, reports RTE.
The trial will continue before the jury next week.
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