A GARDA HAS been acquitted of raping his wife but convicted of child cruelty against his two daughters.

The 48-year-old defendant went on trial in the Central Criminal Court at the end of last month accused of two counts of raping his then wife, two counts of child cruelty and one count of assault causing harm to his now 24-year-old daughter and one count of child cruelty against his now 17-year-old daughter.

He had denied all the charges against him.

Today, the jury returned its verdicts after more than nine hours of deliberations. They found the man not guilty of the two counts of raping his wife, which were alleged to have occurred on dates in 2009 and 2021.

The jury found him guilty of all four counts relating to the two daughters. The cruelty offences against his older daughter occurred on unknown dates between 2007 and 2020 and the assault causing harm occurred on a date between late 2021 and early 2022 after she had turned 18.

The child cruelty count against his younger daughter occurred on dates between 2015 and 2024.

The defendant is a serving member of the gardaí who has been on suspension since December 2024, pending the outcome of this prosecution. He has no previous convictions.

He cannot be identified in order to protect the statutory rights of the complainants to anonymity. The offending took place at two locations in the north-west of the country where the family was living at the relevant times.

Mr Justice Sean Gillane thanked the jury member for their service and excused them from jury duty for a period of five years.

He said he would “reluctantly” remand the defendant on continuing bail after the court heard the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had no objections to it. Mr Justice Gillane said this should not be taken as a signal in relation to the man’s sentence, noting he had now been convicted of a “serious indictable crime”.

The court heard the defendant is now in a new relationship and the couple have a baby together.

The matter will return to court for a sentence hearing on 27 July. Victim impact statements will be prepared.  

On day one of the trial at the Central Criminal Court, Dominic McGinn SC, prosecuting, told the jury that the accused was “a violent and domineering father and husband” who subjected two of his daughters to “unreasonable chastisement” for most of their childhood.

In her evidence, the wife of the accused described two incidents, one in 2009 and another in 2021, when she said her husband raped her. She said she had told him she didn’t want sex, but he said he didn’t care and went ahead with it.

She said that afterwards, she was shocked and felt numb and decided that was the end of the marriage. She told the jury that she slept on the couch for the next few years, and the accused slept in the bedroom.

She said that the first time she spoke to gardaí about it was after it was disclosed during an interview with Tusla social workers.

His eldest daughter, now aged 24, testified that the family home had “an atmosphere of violence and threats” and that it felt like living in a military barracks growing up.

She said on weekends she had to get up at 10am, and if she didn’t, a jug of cold water would be thrown over her.

She said when she was 15, her father told her that her legs looked like the legs of a pool table and that was “a disgrace”. He began forcing her to go running daily, and the only way she could get out of it was by saying she was on her period.

She said that in November 2021, when her mother moved herself and the children out of the family home, they got a puppy. She said she became very fond of this dog, but that when the family went to move back in with her father a few months later, he told her he didn’t want the dog.

Becoming upset in the witness box, she testified that her father told them that “if the dog was brought up, he’d put rat poison in his food”.

She said his behaviour towards the second complainant was more “emotional manipulation”, describing him as insulting. She said he once made her eat a bucket of KFC chicken until it made her sick and was “always onto her about her weight and her appearance”.

She said in March 2021, there was an argument between her parents because her mother had “started to put her foot down”. Her father had barricaded her mother into a room, and the daughter forced open the door and wedged herself between the two of them so he didn’t attack her, she testified.

The younger daughter described an incident when she was around seven and her older brother didn’t want to eat his dinner. Her father put a stick from a tree on the table and told her and her brother to finish their food by a certain time or they’d be in trouble. She said she couldn’t remember if she was hit, but she thought her brother “most likely” was.

She said there were similar incidents involving a stick, a wooden spoon or a cooking utensil when she was between six and 10. She said: “We grew up knowing if we didn’t eat our dinner, we were going to get hit or given out to”.

She said when she was around nine, she was closing a door, and her younger sister’s hand got caught accidentally. Her father came in, put her hand in the door, telling her, “You don’t like how that feels”, before walking away.

She said her father expected her and her brother to stay outside all day during the summers when she was aged between six and 10, and would pass them food out of a window if they were hungry. She said she’d have to “beg” to be let inside to go to the bathroom.

The girl said she was “kind of chubby” at 13 or 14, and when she started to lose weight, they started talking more, but all their conversations were about weight and fitness. She said her father started pushing her to lose more weight, and she felt “obligated” so he would be happy.

She said one time in 2021, when he was tickling her, he put his hands around her neck, strangling her.

James McGowan SC, defending, told the jury that the witnesses were unreliable and the prosecution’s case was “simply incredible”.

He said the allegation that his client is a rapist and capable of child cruelty was set against the background where his ex-partner, who alleges the rapes, is “happy” for the accused to have unsupervised access to the other younger children. 

He asked the jury to consider a letter written by the woman to his client in June 2021, when she moved herself and the children out of the family home.

In the letter the complainant tells the accused that he hadn’t hit her but that he was “very controlling and volatile” and that she wanted out of the marriage and “can’t keep living this lie”. Counsel asked the jury to consider that there was no mention in this letter of any domestic violence involving the children and no mention of rape.

“There is a lot of the parts of this story that don’t make sense and don’t add up,” Mr McGowan said.

He told jurors that they should have a doubt about all the evidence and urged them to acquit the defendant.