A brave survivor who was repeatedly raped by her prison officer father has spoken of her “house of doom” ordeal where he groomed her as a child.
Harry Daly, who was convicted on the longest rape charge sheet in the history of the State, forced his eldest daughter Shaneda to watch pornography before abusing her.
In 2010, the sicko signed 227 pleas – 103 of indecent assault, 24 of sex assault and 100 charges of different forms of rape including oral rape – during a 10-year period.
Justice Paul Carney said there was a five-year period when “one day did not go by without the victim being sexually abused”.
In 2011, Daly was sentenced to 15 years in prison with five years suspended. He was released in 2018.
Shaneda has detailed her battle to recover from years of horrific abuse in her book, Sins of the Father.
In exclusive Garda statements shared with the Irish Sunday Mirror for the first time, she details how Daly carefully and methodically groomed her daily over several years.
He gradually increased his depravity and began raping his daughter, at one point leaving her pregnant.
Shaneda’s mother Rose Daly has stood by her husband despite him pleading guilty to a litany of horrific crimes.
In a Garda statement from July 2010, Shaneda told officers about the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her paedophile father.
The statement reveals how her first memory of being abused was at the age of four or five when he began to sexually abuse her.
The assaults got worse between the ages of nine and 11 when her mother began work as a hospital cleaner in the evenings and her younger siblings were in bed.
Shaneda told gardai: “They’d [brother and sister] normally go to bed at about 5pm. It was then my father started putting on pornography for me to watch with.
“He showed me from the video how to perform oral sex and then I’d have to perform it on him.
“He used to be naked when we were watching the pornography.”
The 46-year-old mother of six said her father forced himself on her “every single night”.
Her statement details how he performed oral sex on her despite her pleas for him to stop.
It also recounts details of the first time he raped her as she told him “stop it hurts”.
She wrote in her statement: “I do not remember any bleeding. I do remember it happened after this on numerous occasions.
“It was usually when my mam was at work. He would be in the bath and he would call me in and make me sit on top of him.
“He would tell me to get undressed and get in... After it was finished he would tell me to get dressed and go to bed. I was not on any contraception at this time and my father did not use any condoms.” In her book, Shaneda revealed how she fell pregnant to her father and felt she was carrying an “alien”.
She said: “I wanted it gone from my body. I never ever explicitly told Carly [her friend] it was Harry’s child but she must have guessed.
“I was drinking all the time, trying to block everything out as well as get rid of the baby.
“I’d heard stories of girls who had drunk spirits then thrown themselves down the stairs – I wouldn’t do the stairs thing, but I kept trying the drink.” Shaneda describes how she went to a house in Limerick where a woman gave her some liquid, and how some time later, the pregnancy ended.
Daly also raped his daughter when they were on family camping trips.
Her garda statement describes how: “There would be myself, my brother Alan, my Dad and myself and Alan would bring one friend along each.
“We would all stay in the one tent. We all had our own sleeping bags. He would get me to lie beside him so I would masturbate him while all the others were asleep.”
One of the things that hurt Shaneda the most was the fact her mother stayed with her father, after he admitted the abuse. Speaking to this reporter in 2015, Rose admitted she “still loves” her husband.
She chose to stand by her paedophile husband saying “she will never put him out” despite how he sexually abused their daughter.
Speaking at the time from her home outside Ennis, Co Clare, Rose said: “I’ve known him since I was a young woman.
“Love just doesn’t disappear so it doesn’t, he’s the only person I’ve ever been with and I’m not just going to go out some night and meet somebody else to continue my life. Well, I can’t visualise it. I would never put him out, why would I?
“I visit him, yes. He’s admitted it, I feel angry, of course.
“I sit down with him and I talk to him, it’s something that happened, it’s something that was faced.
“Of course he accepts it, it’s not like it’s all lovey dovey and that, I have my say when things get too hard for me and that, and he’s reminded constantly as to why he’s in there, so that’s about it.”
When asked if the anger for what Daly did to their daughter is gone Rose said, “No”.
She added: “That never goes. I am angry with him.”
Rose said at the time “it hasn’t been decided” if he will return to live with her when he is released.
The abuse came to light when Shaneda decided to report her father – he had moved out but eventually her mother took him back in.
He didn’t abuse her from the age of 17 years until nine years later when he tried to touch her breast. By then she was a mother.
Shaneda told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I was 34 before I did anything but I had enough and reported him. I had heard rumours and I knew he was not going to stop.
“He admitted everything and there was no trial. He was a prison officer, and he always said, ‘Admit the crime and you do less time’. He knew the system.”
Mrs Daly continues to reside with her husband Harry in Co Leitrim since his release from prison in 2018.
