LIMERICK man Christopher O’Mahony was unmasked by his daughter and sister-in-law as a “monster” and “paedophile” who sexually assaulted them when they were children.
Mr O’Mahony (67), of Kerrykyle, Ardagh, County Limerick, who was charged with a total of 54 counts on indictment, pleaded guilty to 18 sample counts of sexually assaulting and indecently assaulting the two girls from when they were aged nine and 10 on dates in the 1980s and 1990s.
O’Mahony’s daughter, Emma O’Shaughnessy (née O’Mahony), and her aunt, Helen Costelloe, waived their right to anonymity at O’Mahony’s sentencing hearing at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court, allowing him to be named.
Ms O’Shaughnessy broke down in court re-telling the horrendous abuse she suffered “by my abuser, my father, Christopher O’Mahony”.
She told the court her mother and two sisters had “chosen to support my abuser”, describing how her father’s abuse had split their family.
“Now I am fatherless, I am motherless, and I no longer have sisters, which is unimaginably cruel,” Ms O’Shaughnessy said.
Prosecuting barrister Lily Buckley said O’Mahony “depleted and degraded” his daughter with years of sexual, psychological, and physical abuse.
The sexual attacks on Ms O’Shaughnessy began under the pretence of O’Mahony treating her with ointment for a rash, the court heard, which he insisted he would have to apply in the bathroom of their family home. Once in the bathroom, her father would remove her clothes and sexually abuse her physically and verbally.
O’Mahony told his daughter that the abuse was a “secret” and she could not tell her mother, who was away working when the sexual abuse occurred.
“She became a quiet and compliant child, she was cold, shuddering uncontrollably and doubled over at the sink,” Ms Buckley said.
“It hurt and stung, she was scared frozen, and stared blankly into the scummy soapy water while she tried to blank out what was happening.”
‘He erased me as a person’
Reading a victim impact statement in court, Ms O’Shaughnessy said: “What my father did to me was inhumane – 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, no longer somebody with thoughts and feelings, I was a thing to be used, abused, controlled and manipulated.”
She said the sex assaults left her feeling “disgusting, dirty, and full of shame”.
“I felt unclean, 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, sore, and bleeding.”
The sexual abuse eventually stopped after Ms O’Shaugnessy (then 13) fought back, pushing O’Mahony off at their family home.
However, the court heard, the physical and psychological abuse continued and O’Mahony ruled the family home with “an iron fist”.
Ms Buckley said O’Mahony kicked his daughter, called her a “scourge” and “bitch”, and told her he “hated” her.
O’Mahony also belittled the way Ms O’Shaughnessy spoke resulting in her speech being “altered”.
Ms O’Shaughnessy said she had been left with a lifelong trauma of using toilets because her father controlled the amount of toilet paper she would use. He would also refuse her permission to go to the toilet, resulting in her suffering from urinary tract infections.
She said her father “sought to destroy any joy in my life”, including her “love of music”, telling the court how, when one of her school teachers donated a piano to her, her father “locked it in a shed and it’s lay in there for the past 20 years”.
‘A split in the family’
The sex abuse emerged after a family meeting on July 4, 2021, when Ms O’Shaughnessy’s aunt, Helen Costelloe, disclosed she had been sexually abused by O’Mahony from when she was aged nine to 15.
Three days later, on July 7, 2021, O’Mahony presented himself at Henry Street Garda Station and told Gardaí he was “handing himself in”.
Ms Costelloe said O’Mahony started sexually abusing her when he moved into her family home after marrying her sister, who was 12 years her senior.
Including incidents in the family home, O’Mahony, a former rent collector with Limerick County Council, also sexually assaulted Ms Costelloe in his car on his work rounds around Limerick.
The sex attacks on Ms Costelloe, now aged 52, eventually stopped when, aged 14, she fought back after O’Mahony forced himself on her while she was attending a public toilet cubicle during one of their work trips together.
Ms Costelloe told the court the sexual abuse left a “profound impact” on her life and that it began shortly after she was flower girl at her sister’s wedding to O’Mahony in the early 1980s.
She said the “complex trauma” she suffered “seeped into every crevice” of her life, and her “innocence as a child was robbed”.
Ms Costelloe said she suffered a marriage breakdown because the impact of the abuse, and that her sister and two nieces were “heartbreakingly” no longer in her life.
Ms Buckley said the victim’s family “still struggle to accept the truth”, and prosecuting Garda Detective James Muldowney, attached to the Limerick Garda Divisional Protective Services Unit, told the court “there is a split in the family”.
Both victims said they wished to thank Garda Det Muldowney and his colleagues, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and Ms Buckley for their work in bringing O’Mahony before the court.
Ms Buckley told the in-camera hearing that the two victims had no issue with being named and that they both wanted Christopher O’Mahony identified.
O’Mahony, who showed no emotion in court, said through his barrister that he did not disagree with any of the evidence against him. He was remanded in custody for sentencing this Thursday (March 20).
