A woman secretly recorded a family meeting at which she confronted her brother about raping her when they were children, a court has heard.
Excerpts of the audio recording on the woman’s phone were played to a Central Criminal Court jury during the 43-year-old man’s trial last month.
In the recording, he expressed apologies to his sister but did not make admissions.
The Donegal man, who cannot be named to protect the woman’s anonymity, had pleaded not guilty to four charges of anal rape, one of oral rape and one of sexual assault at the family home in the north-west between May 1991 and June 1993.
The Irish Examiner reports that after a trial in March a jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on all charges. The man has no previous convictions.
Defence counsel Michael O’Higgins SC submitted that though the man accepted the jury had returned verdicts and that he must live by them, he was making no admissions to the crimes.
A local garda told Pauline Walley SC, prosecuting, that the man abused his sister when he was in his mid-teens and she was aged between ten and 12 years. He committed the crimes in the family home while their parents were out working.
The garda said the woman made her garda statement in 2015 after tensions between her brother and other family members went unresolved.
The garda said the family found out about the allegations following a confrontation between the woman, her brother and his wife in early 2013.
For full story see https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/donegal-man-convicted-of-raping-his-sister-when-they-were-children-to-be-sentenced-in-may-917162.html