A Roscommon man has been jailed for six months for sexually abusing his five-year old daughter over the course of two years.

The court heard the young girl was also “prostituted out” by her mother to their neighbour. The mother is currently serving a 14 year sentence, with four and a half years suspended, for sexual assault, sexual exploitation and child cruelty. The neighbour received a 14-year sentence for a variety of sexual offences against the child, including rape.

The mother was in a relationship with the neighbour and would make the child available to him for sexual abuse.

The child’s 59-year-old father pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexual assault of the girl at the family home in Roscommon between July 2004 and July 2006.

Judge Martin Nolan sentenced the man to two years in prison but suspended all bar six months of it, having taken into account the man’s plea of guilty, his remorse and the fact he has a severe medical condition.

He said the girl had been abused in an awful way and “prostituted” by her mother. “The trauma inflicted on this child is beyond imagination,” Judge Nolan said. He added she now appeared to be getting on with her life with the aid of very good foster parents.

“For a father to abuse his child in this way is reprehensible,” he said.

In a victim impact report read to the court, the girl said her father “has left permanent scars that will never go away.”

“He had no right to hurt me,” she wrote. “No one ever said I love you. Every child needs to be told they are loved and he never did.”

Defence counsel Paul Greene SC said his client had nothing to do with the more serious abuse orchestrated by the girl’s mother. Counsel said his client was in fear of the mother and “was in a family environment that had become chaotic and dysfunctional.”