“Mulvey, of Ferney Grove, Mahon, Cork, would get his daughter to touch him. When she was older he would touch her private parts and when she was 15 he raped her. The court heard he raped her on two more occasions.
The victim told her mother about the abuse in 1997. When her mother confronted her then ex-husband, he admitted the abuse.
Ms Mulvey went to gardai three years later and the man told them that the abuse happened at least once a month. He said he didn’t find it unusual when she didn’t try to stop him raping her.
He believed that his behaviour was caused by something wrong with his mind and that he couldn’t control himself.”
“Mr Justice Paul Carney declared him a sex offender and sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment. However, he suspended the final six years.”
Rage inducing, isn’t it? Here’s a fully grown man, a father, who has systematically groomed and abused his own child and he’s given a 6 year sentence, the same sentence as a woman who mowed a man down in a drug fueled rage and an importer or Chinese garlic who declared them apples to avoid a garlic tax. I do not know by what arbitrary decisions sentences are made, but I’d sure like them explained to me.
I don’t understand if the mother went to the gardai when she learned what her husband had done or not. It reads like it was down to the daughter to report him three years later, but maybe I”m reading it wrong. Regardless, I am in awe of at the bravery of Lorraine Mulvey in waving her right to anonymity so that she might help other victims of abuse speak up against their abusers. I don’t understand how any parent can subject their child to such a monstrous betrayal of trust. I don’t get how any man could sexually assault a five-year-old. Either way, I hope for her sake she finds some measure of peace, and I hope her prick of a father who ‘couldn’t control himself’ around a child, rots.
