A retired firefighter has been jailed for ten years for repeatedly raping and abusing a teenage boy over twenty-five years ago.
Liam Carr, of Ballina, Falcarragh, Co Donegal, was also registered as a sex offender and will be supervised by the probation service for three years following his release.
The survivor of Liam Carr’s abuse was just 13 years-old when the first offence took place in September 1995.
The trial heard Carr was twenty years older than him when he befriended him.
What he did was described by the judge as a “significant breach of trust” which caused “considerable harm” to the teenager.
The survivor, now a grown man, first went to Gardaí in 2015 and it took another six years for a jury to convict his abuser.
“Six years of complete torture,” was how he put it in his victim impact statement.
“Not only was my childhood taken from me,” he said, “but I’m 39 now and the majority of my life has been spent trying to deal with what happened to me and trying to get justice.”
Carr stood trial four times for these offences. The first two collapsed for legal reasons, while the jury in the third trial failed to reach agreement.
The 59 year-old refuses to accept the jury’s verdicts, continues to maintain his innocence, and has already indicated his intention to appeal.
