April 2014 Jail our dad forever – Sisters Detail Vile Abuse at Hands of Father Two sisters today break their silence on the years of sadistic sexual abuse suffered at the hands of their evil father who they call ‘Ulster’s Fritzl’ East Belfast monster Alan ‘Herbie’ Curragh used daughters Cathy and Emma as sex slaves from when they were just six years old.
In 2006, a 17-year-old Cathy gave birth to his child, a little boy who died when he was just six.
Today the women publicly expose their father as a child rapist who they say should “never ever” be released from jail.
On Thursday, 49-year-old Curragh — who is already serving a 13 year sentence for abusing stepdaughter Emma — appeared at Downpatrick Crown Court again where he admitted seven counts of abusing Cathy, now 26.
The court heard how twisted Curragh:
Repeatedly abused and raped the girls over a period of nearly 20 years.
Pulled a gun on six-year-old Cathy.
Threatened to kill their mother if they told of abuse.
Manipulated Cathy into giving evidence against her sister.
And fathered a son to younger sibling Cathy. “Going to bed at night time, I still see his face in the window,” Emma, 30, told Sunday Life.
“Thinking that he’s got out of jail and nobody’s told you, thinking he’s escaped and coming after you. At the minute I can’t sleep at night now.”
The women asked that their first names be changed as they attempt to rebuild their lives after years of what they call “living hell” at the hands of the Ballybeen born beast.
Emma’s nightmare began when she was in primary one, shortly after Curragh married her mother.
“I was about 5 or 6 when it started. He pulled out a gun, stuck it in my mouth and told me if I ever told anyone he would kill my mum and then me,” explained the mum-of-three. “Sometimes he’d throw money at me when he was finished.”
“I tried to fight back one day, and it was the worst thing I could ever have done because my mum paid for it, double, in front of me.”
Curragh, who the court was told has a history of domestic violence, abused Emma while she sat on his knee, when he was driving and even at her grandparents’ house.
“There was no escape. He had you cornered everywhere,” she said.
The rapes and assaults lasted until she turned 14, when she plucked up the courage to make a report to police. A short time later, she tried to take her own life.
It was then she told her mother, still married to the sex offender at that time, of the abuse. “She ended up crashing a car, she couldn’t handle it,” said the 30 year-old.
The marriage ended and so did the abuse against Emma although she says Curragh wasn’t questioned by police until she was 19-years-old.
By this stage Herbie Curragh had “totally brainwashed” Cathy, then 15, into believing she was in an intimate relationship with him.
Cathy, diagnosed with Bipolar Psychotic Disorder when she was a teenager, said: “He had a hold over me, I didn’t have my own thoughts, my own mind, it was him — I did whatever he told me to.”
In 2011, Curragh was tried for abusing Emma but the jury failed to reach a verdict after the child rapist forced Cathy to take to the stand against her sister in court.
“He told me what to say, word for word,” the 26-year-old explained. “And I agreed because I thought things were going to happen again if I didn’t. He told me to say that it was all lies, and that they (her family) are sitting in each other’s houses making all this up.”
“I was breaking down and crying and didn’t know what to.
But the court knew Curragh had a hold over Cathy. After the verdict, the judge approved a legal request for a DNA test on Cathy’s three-year-old son.
The DNA test revealed the boy Cathy believed was fathered by a steady boyfriend, was conceived through incest.
A re-trial was ordered.
Said Emma: “Then I was told there was a perjury charge coming (against Cathy) and I said, no, there’s not. I knew deep down that it wasn’t her speaking (in court). I knew it was him and I knew he played on her illness. She was easy prey.”
Cathy said the DNA result made her realise she had to escape the monster who had ruined her life.
“I was gobsmacked, it was absolutely unreal. I realised that he had total control over me, over my life, my mind, my thoughts.”
At the re-trial, Curragh forced Emma to take to the stand again and relive the years of hell she suffered as a child.
This time he was found guilty and sentenced to 13 years in jail — eight years for abusing Emma, and five years for the incest in which Cathy’s son was conceived.
Sadly, the little boy, who was six at the time, died from rare genetic disorder in the same month that the trial ended.
Cathy added: “I remember the day when the judge said in court that the boy had passed away, he (Curragh) didn’t even flinch.”
Curragh — who has admitted to five charges of indecent assault on Cathy from 1995 to 2006, and two counts of rape between November 2002 and November 2006 — is due to be sentenced this week.
Emma said: “We’ve already been told because he got such a long sentence for the
first time, he’ll not get as much this time. He got eight years for me putting me through an eight year ordeal. One year per year that I lived it.”
She added: “I read the book Fritzl, he got life for incest with his daughter. Where’s the justice? To me he (Curragh) should have got life for that alone.
“To only get the same length of time that he put me through, I mean I’ve lost my childhood. Thinking my mummy hated me, thinking I was a ‘dirty wee bitch’ — because that’s what I was called. I scarred myself because I used to wash myself in bleach after what he did to me.”
Cathy added: “I just wish that he would be locked up underneath the ground in a tunnel somewhere, never to see the light of day again please comment with a heart for the survivors of sex crimes