A man has been put behind bars for more than 17 years after he raped and sexually assaulted his four daughters, who would sleep together in order to escape his abuse.

In a hearing at the Central Criminal Court in Cork, Ireland, it was heard how the man in his 40s, who cannot be named for legal reasons to protect the identity of his victims, began sexually abusing his children in 2005.

The abuse continued for 16 years until 2021 when the offences came to light and a Garda investigation was launched. It was heard how Tusla, the independent statutory regulator of early years services in Ireland, got involved in 2012 when his 14-year-old daughter made a complaint - but her father put her under duress to withdraw it.

She did so because she “didn’t want to cause trouble". She had also heard her dad tell her mum how the complaint would "finish" him and he would be found "at the end of a rope". She was made to apologise to her dad for what was deemed false accusations and when the apology was made, he turned to the mum and said: “I told you. I knew it.” The offending behaviour went on for another nine years, the Irish Mirror reports.

Ms Justice Karen O’Connor said that it was “disturbing” that the then teenage girl had been put under pressure to apologise to the person was was “breaching her trust” in the worst possible way.

She said that the man abused his two eldest daughters on a near daily, if not several times a day basis, for years. She noted that the victims had told her that they weren’t safe anywhere.

She said the young women had said in their victim impact statements that their father, who was supposed to be their “protector”, instead abused them when they were asleep in their bedrooms, at his workplace, and even at the home of their grandfather and great grandparents.

He gave them specific sexual instructions “sometimes two or three times a day” and spied on them through keyholes of bathrooms. One of the young women recalled an occasion where their mother was downstairs and he moved to abuse her. When she mentioned the presence of her mother he still carried out the sexual assault, insisting that he would be quick.

Ms Justice O’Connor said that the young girls were given “false promises” that the offending behaviour would come to an end but it happened on a “continuous basis.” He threatened the young girls in relation to the potential consequences of telling others what was going on in their home. He often punished them by withdrawing permission for them to go to events.

A garda investigation commenced in April of 2021 when a complaint was made to gardai. The man denied all wrongdoing when he was arrested in January of 2022 and the case was listed for a three week trial which was due to commence last month.

The man had been charged with 128 counts of sexual assault, attempted rape, rape and attempted sexual assault. He subsequently pleaded guilty to sample counts. Most of the offending were sexual assaults but the offences also include rape, oral rape and attempted rape.

Ms Justice O’Connor described as an “aggravating factor” in the case the fact that the man was a in a “dominant position” with the children as a “person of authority.” She said that the duration of the offending was also a consideration as was the horrifying level of frequency at which it occurred.

She said that a man who was supposed to love and protect his children instead subjected them to “degrading and humiliating” behaviour. Ms Justice O’Connor said that the daughter who was forced to apologise to her father at the age of 14 for making a complaint against him rightly felt an “enormous sense of injustice.”

Ms Justice O’Connor stated that the children often tried to pretend they were asleep as their father climbed steps of their bunk beds to abuse them. She noted an instance where one of the young women was ordered to put on her school uniform so her father could abuse her as she wore it. The young girl, who had just started secondary school, pretended she couldn’t find it.

Ms Justice O’Connor said that one of the young women had referred to the family home as a “house of horrors.”

“This was a cold determined campaign of abuse. The family home should have felt safe. A child shouldn’t have to fear going to bed at night with footsteps creeping up.

"The siblings tried to protect each other only to realise in 2020 that he was abusing them all. They tried to avoid being alone with him by sleeping together.”

Ms Justice O’Connor described the actions of the man as being “egregious and prolonged” in nature.

In mitigation, she said that she had to take his guilty plea in to consideration as it spared his daughters the ordeal of a three week trial. However, Ms Justice O’Connor noted that the guilty plea wasn’t entered at the earliest opportunity.

She said that it was up to the young women to decide if the apology and expression of remorse made by the accused was genuine in nature.

She praised the four young women who had given victim impact statements saying that they were “extraordinarily courageous” and “remarkable.” She sentenced the man to 17 and-a-half years in prison, backdating the sentence to when he first entered custody last month.

The girls were all children when the offending behaviour occurred. The eldest victim was born towards the end of the 1990s whilst the youngest was born at the end of the noughties.