‘Instead of trying to be a parent to me, he became a monster’: Daughter of Limerick 'monster'

***READER DISCRETION ADVISED***

Before I begin, I would like to say a deep, heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped and supported me so I could be here today. All your kind words and work have restored some of my faith in human beings.

I would specifically like to thank Judge Sinead McMullan and Judge Colin Daly, all the DPP staff who worked on and chose to prosecute our case, our barrister Lily Buckley for fighting our case in court and for her sincere empathy and advice throughout, our diligent solicitor Brendan Gill, who fights our case by Lily's side, all the kind, approachable gardaí and detectives in the Limerick Divisional Protective Service Unit especially James, Dave, Lisa, and Marie, who guided me through the process, who answered my million and one questions, and gave their time, support and hard work, my husband Declan, who has offered unwavering support, held my hand and steadied my nerves.

It is difficult to know where to start. How do I explain the damage that he, my abuser, my father Christopher O'Mahony inflicted on me. How can I explain the darkest times of my life when words feel weak and inadequate. I wonder how anything I say could possibly show you the devastation he caused.

What my father did to me was inhumane. The hurt and the emotional scars left by years of physical, psychological and emotional abuse were compounded a thousandfold by the sexual abuse.

When my father sexually abused me, he erased me as a person. What he did to me destroyed me. I was no longer a child. I was no longer a person. I changed from being a person to a thing. I wasn't somebody anymore with thoughts and feelings to be acknowledged or taken into account. 

I was a thing to be used, abused, controlled and manipulated by an adult, not just any adult or random stranger either, but my father, who should have been my protector, who should have had my best interests at heart, who should have kept me safe, but who didn't. Instead of trying to be a parent to me, he became a monster instead. After years of bullying, belittling, emotional and physical abuse, he sexually abused me.

I felt disgusting and dirty and full of shame. I didn't want anyone to know how dirty and defiled I was. I felt unclean, physically dirty like maggots were crawling under my skin. I would wash, and scrub, and still feel dirty. I wanted to scrub the skin off my body, and I often tried until I was raw, and sore, and bleeding.

If I said anything, it would be my word against his. And I believed him when he told me no one would believe me.   

READ MORE: ‘Civil war’ breaks out in Limerick family after victims reveal ‘secret’ of sexual abuse 

My father destroyed our family. His actions cleaved it in two. My mother Joan O’Mahony and my two sisters, Ceara O'Mahony and Christina Hogan have chosen to support my abuser.

I had carried that burden of abuse as a child and as an adult for more than a quarter of a century. I had believed it was just me he hated and abused. I believed by carrying the burden alone I was protecting everyone. When I realised it wasn't just me, that my father had also abused my aunt Helen I could no longer in good conscience  stay silent.

I tried to tell my mother and sisters as plainly and as gently as I could what had happened to me at the hands of my father. I tried to give them as much support and comfort as I could. They wanted me to keep carrying that burden indefinitely so they didn't have to think about it, or do anything about it.

Joan and Christina, over the coming days and weeks, presented arguments against my going to the gardai.  But now that I had opened Pandora's box, there was no closing it again, and no going back so I had to make my statement to the gardai.  As soon as I told Joan I had started making my witness statement, she and my sisters withdrew all pretence of support. They rallied around my abuser. They abandoned me. So now, I am fatherless, I am motherless, and I no longer have sisters.

I had, for a very long time, felt fatherless but also to lose my mother and my sisters felt  unimaginably cruel. 

I had always made excuses for my mother always giving in to him and taking his side over mine. I thought if she and my sisters knew what he was really like, they would stop allowing him to dictate and rule everything.

They might see how lazy and self-centred he is and stop doing everything for him-working and cooking and cleaning and nursing him like some overgrown baby incapable of doing anything for himself, but no, that didn't happen. So now I wonder why I tortured myself for years for a family I perhaps never had in the first place. I take strength from my husband Declan. He is my family now. My place of safety and love.  

More than a quarter century has passed now since my father sexually abused me. In all that time, he never once tried to apologise for that or any other abuse  he inflicted upon me. Instead, he looked for ways to manipulate, upset, and demonstrate control over me whenever he could.

Therefore, any potential apology offered now is less than worthless. He's not sorry now unless it is for himself being exposed as a paedophile and child abuser. Any words of apology from him now are a false and pathetic attempt to appear repentant and to try and save his own skin. He cares not one bit for his victims.  I'm tired now from carrying the burden of guilt and shame  on my own for many, many years. If it was difficult to carry as an adult it was intolerably cruel to carry as a child.

The abuse I suffered is no longer a secret. I can no longer carry the secret which only serves the guilty. The shame is my abuser's, his, and his alone. I have had a life of suffering, far more than I can possibly write or express in this statement. I can only hope the suffering fades as my years roll on and the justice served in this court will help to diminish my childhood wounds.  

Now I leave my story in the hands of the court, and the judge to decide the fate of my abuser.

~This is an abridged version of Emma O'Shaughnessy's victim impact statement which she read out in court and ran to 3,500 words