A judge has told a man who abused his foster daughter for all of her teenage years that he had inflicted “terror, fear and isolation” on her.
Stephen Murray, of Humpreystown, Valleymount, Co Wicklow can now be named because the survivor, Kelly Kemmy, chose to waive her right to anonymity.
Before passing sentence, Mr J. Paul McDermott told Stephen Murray that the “gross sexual abuse” he inflicted was carried out against a “vulnerable young child” and he said it was clear that what he did to her caused “physical and emotional pain.”
He also described him as “devious” in the way that he kept it from his wife. She, and other family members, were often asleep in the house while it took place.
Kelly Kemmy was just 11-years-old when he first abused her in 2009 and in the almost seven years that followed, he went on to rape her over a thousand times.
In her victim impact statement, the now 24yo survivor said the abuse felt like a “life sentence.”
“I was the child and you were the adult telling me it was a secret,” she told him. She said she felt “completely alone,” before adding that there was “no safe place” for her
Murray was jailed for eleven years.
