A MAN HAS claimed he and his twin brother were treated “like sexual pawns” by their stepfather who repeatedly sexually abused and beat them as well as making them perform sexual acts on each other.
A trial at Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court heard the the treatment of the two eight-year-old boys by their stepfather, who is accused of 41 charges of indecent assault, child cruelty and animal cruelty at their home in Co Wicklow, was “worse than a dog.”
The complainant also claims he and his twin were forced by their stepfather to watch a pet dog being tied to a railway track and run over by a train as punishment for allowing the animal to escape off a rope.
The 66-year-old man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had pleaded not guilty to 12 charges of indecent assault against each of the two boys on dates between 1 December, 1988 and 31 May, 1989 at a location in Co Wicklow as well as seven charges of child cruelty on each of his alleged victims over the same time period.
The man, who now has an address in the west of Ireland, is also charged with a single count of animal cruelty and two counts of indecent assault by making the two victims abuse each other.
The trial heard the accused had moved to Ireland from Britain in 1988 with his partner and her twin sons and the couple’s two other children.
One of the twins described how he and his brother lived in a premises with nothing but blankets and a box, while the rest of the family lived in an adjacent premises.
The witness said the physical beatings with “a big brown belt with a big buckle” and “a truncheon-like stick” seemed to happen on a daily basis whenever they did something wrong.
The 40-year-old man told counsel for the DPP, Séamus Clarke SC, that the physical and sexual abuse had also occurred when they were living in Britain and continued when they moved to Ireland.
“We never had a break,” he remarked.
He described how the accused’s little black mongrel dog had been tied to a train track while he and his brother were forced by their stepfather to watch it being run over by a train “to teach us a lesson” for allowing the dog to escape.
Asked about the sexual abuse, the man said he was raped quite often by the accused while he and his brother were also made to perform sexual acts on each other.
“It seemed like the normal back then. We didn’t know otherwise,” he remarked.
He recalled how the accused would come into the premises and send his brother out before undoing his pants and making the witness do the same before they would touch each other and get him to perform oral sex.
Asked if the accused ever said anything, the man replied: “I can’t remember. This is something I’ve locked away from my brain for the last 30 years.”.
“We were just little kids. There was nothing we could do. We just did what he asked because of the fear of what would come after if we didn’t,” he observed.
The man said the abuse only stopped when he and his brother were taken into care after a teacher had noticed bruising on his brother’s body.
“From that day on everything changed and everything got better,” he said.
Recalling being moved to a foster home, he observed: “We had food. We had people who gave a damn.”
The trial heard the man and his brother also got passed around by their stepfather to other men who were referred to as “uncles”.
“We had lots of uncles,” he remarked.
Under cross-examination by Patrick McGrath SC for the accused, the witness acknowledged that most of the incidents with other men had occurred in England but had involved about a dozen men in a house near where they lived in Wicklow.
He added: “We were introduced to an uncle. We just sat down. We’d take our clothes off and just crack on.”
The man rejected the suggestion that he was incorrect to state he and his twin were cut off from the rest of the family.
He said they were never allowed in the other premises as “we were the outcasts.”
The court heard that the boys’ mother, whom he rarely saw, had “turned a blind eye to everything.”
The man said his mother had once almost caught the accused abusing him but she would largely keep herself in the other premises.
He also denied that the pet dog had died by getting run over by a train after it broke free.
McGrath said the accused accepted that he had hit the witness a number of times but denied all suggestions that he had sexually abused the two boys or beaten them with a belt or stick.
The witness rejected the suggestion that he could not recall many details because none of them happened.
“I would not be sat here if none of this happened. I would not put myself or my family through this,” he added.
The trial before Judge Martina Baxter and a jury of eight men and four women continues tomorrow.
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