Step-brother faces historic rape allegations

(CNS): A 28-year-old man from Windsor Park, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been accused by his step-sister of raping her multiple times from when she was six years old until she was a teenager. The young woman first told an adult at her school in 2014 but for a variety of reasons it has taken five years to get the case to court, where it is now being heard by a judge sitting alone. The case is based entirely on the evidence of the victim.

The man, who is said to have first raped the victim when she was a very young child, cannot be named under a court order because identifying him could also lead to the identification of the victim due to their family connection.

As the crown opened the case against him Friday, the court heard that the victim came to live with his family when she was around five or six years old, and shortly afterwards her step-brother first sexually assaulted and raped her when he was around 14. He had called her into his room removed her clothes, taped her mouth and raped her and then threatened he would kill her if she told anyone.

At the time she had recently arrived from Honduras and the court heard that she was only just learning to speak English, but believed she could trust her abuser as he was her step-brother.

On the second occasion, she was raped and physically assaulted not just by her step-brother but several of his friends, who by that time were all adults. On that occasion she was also threatened into silence. By that time she had seen her step-brother in possession of a gun, she said.

There were at least two more occasions that the woman said she was able to recall specifically, and in both instances the rape again took place in the family home and she was threatened. The crown said that the man had sometimes offered the young girl money and had also encouraged her from a very young age to smoke ganja.

Although the girl was already under the supervision of a social worker, as concerns had been raised that she was being physically abused by her father, she did not raise the issue with any adults until five years ago. She was then removed from the home but the incident was not reported to the police until 2016, and it took her sometime to find the courage to talk about the abuse and give an interview to the authorities.

When she did that for the first time, she was 18 years old. She said she had made the decision to speak out because she was pregnant at the time with the child of a man who is now her husband. Telling the authorities that she would not want anything to happen to her child, she said she had made the decision to reveal the details of her abuse and asked for charges to be pressed against her abuser.

Despite giving a full account of the rapes, the case does not seemed to have progressed. When it was passed on to the new Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH), which now deals with sex abuse cases, the detectives had concerns about the first interview. As a result, the woman was interviewed again and the case was then progressed. The accused man was arrested in 2017 and interviewed but denied all allegations. However, he was charged in 2018.