Some people may find this report distressing
The 37-year-old wrote two letters to Gardaí confessing to the crimes which he committed as a teenager.
Thomas Sheehan, of no fixed abode in Tipperary, has been sentenced to four years in prison for orally raping and sexually assaulting his sister Edel Sheehan, who has waived her anonymity in order to identify her abuser.
The sexual abuse took place in various locations around Clonmel between April 2000 and April 2002, when he was aged between 14 and 16, and his sister was aged between 12 and 14.
Sheehan has 29 previous convictions, including criminal damage, threat to kill, assault and possession of a knife.
The 37-year-old initiated this investigation when he wrote two letters in 2020 admitting to the abuse, after he had suffered a stroke while in prison.
Mr. Justice David Keane said the crimes were a “significant breach of trust on a vulnerable victim,” but he considered Mr. Sheehan’s voluntary confession when sentencing him.
He imposed a six-year sentence and reduced it to four years after taking into account Sheehan’s guilty plea, which he said spared his sister from the anxiety of giving evidence at a trial.
He also took into account the defences argument that the siblings grew up in circumstances of “extreme neglect, poverty and violence”.
He imposed concurrent two-year sentences for the remaining offences and imposed a one-year post-release supervision order with the Probation Service.
Mr. Sheehan attempted to express his remorse by reading a letter of apology to his sister during his sentencing, in the hopes of forgiveness, but Ms. Sheehan left the court when her brother took to the stand.
In a victim impact statement read in court, Edel said she was left traumatised and would never forgive her brother for what he had done.
