Brothers who abused teenage girls in the 90s identified for first time

Declan Brennan

Two Westmeath brothers who sexually assaulted teenage girls in the mid-90s can now be identified for the first time.

John Owens (72) of Cois Abhainn, Multyfarnham, was jailed last February for eight years after pleading guilty to nine counts of sexual assault of three teenage girls.

He could not be identified at the time because his brother, Martin Owens (66), was facing trial in April for sexual assaults of one of these victims as well as a fourth victim.

On April 13th last, Martin Owens of Greenville, Dublin Road, Castlepollard, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to sexually assaulting Deirdre Boylan and Lorraine Kiernan on dates in 1994 and 1996.

Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to four more counts of sexually assaulting Deirdre Boyhan on dates in 1994 and 1995.

John Owens pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court last December to nine sample counts of sexual assault on dates between July 1992 and November 1996 of Boylan, Sinead Nally and Aoife O’Dwyer.

The court heard that he would repeatedly molest the girls whenever he got them alone. He invited one girl to take alcohol, but she refused it and would also give her presents of naggins of vodka.

The victims, two of whom were sisters, were aged 14 to 17 and were babysitting for Owens' children.

Sentencing Martin Owens on Monday, Judge Tony Hunt said that he had groomed the victims and, in the case of Boyhan, plied the child with alcohol.

He said Martin Owens was a trusted employer in a well-known local business who had engaged in the sexual exploitation of two children who had put their trust in him.

He said these were not impulsive or youthful acts but were the actions of a mature person who would undoubtedly know what he was doing was wrong.

He said Owens carefully created circumstances in which he could get access to the victims.

He imposed a sentence of five years and six months with the final six months suspended for three years on condition that he keep the peace and be of good behaviour.

Boylan told the court that Martin Owens “used me as a child for his own sexual gratification”. She said the repeated sexual assaults left an “indelible mark” on her of “a stress far beyond my capacity to understand”.

She said at the time she felt ashamed, embarrassed and guilty, and believed she had done something wrong. She asked herself if Owens would not have started to touch her if she had not been wearing shorts.

She said that all his life Martin Owens has worn a mask of a hardworking businessman and family man but that a paedophilic sexual predator lay behind this mask.

She said she now knows that it was never her fault and that she did not let it happen because she did not have a choice.

“I survived this sexual abuse by making myself silent. I am handing back the shame, the guilt, the responsibility,” she said.

Mother-of-four Kieran, 44, told the court that when she was asked to babysit for the Owens she felt proud to be considered mature enough to do the job. S

he said the sexual assault left her frightened and utterly confused and embarrassed and she has never forgotten it.

“I thought that I had done something to attract his unwanted attention,” she said in a victim impact report. She said he scared her and for the next five days she made sure she was never alone with him again.

She described how the child abuse endured by her sister affected their relationship. She said she felt completely numb when Ms Boyhan told her in 2023 about this abuse.

“Martin Owens has taken from our family a version of our sister Deidre that we will never know,” she told the court.

At the sentencing hearing of John Owens last February, Justice Eileen Creedon said that the defendant targeted the victims and his acts were gross violations, which took place on a continuous and extremely frequent basis.

She said the abuse had caused the survivors “mental trauma” and noted they each felt “grief for the lives they would have lived” otherwise.

She noted the defendant has offered, as a gesture of remorse, €20,000 to each victim and they have accepted this. She said that “paying off a victim is a legal impossibility”.

She set a headline total sentence of 15 years, which she reduced to a total sentence of eight years to take account of the mitigating factors, in particular, the guilty pleas.

Boylan told the court that she went from being a carefree, goofy, innocent teenage girl, to a child weighed down by self-loathing, shame and guilt.

“I struggled with school. The abuse took up my head space. What was done to me gave me a stress factor far beyond my capability to cope and left me spending the next 30 years in survival mode,” she said.

She said she thought she must have done something to attract the unwanted attention from her abuser.

Nally told the court that she was an innocent 14-year -old girl with no sexual knowledge and could not understand what was happening to her with John Owens.

She said she did not have the confidence to tell anyone and felt like she had betrayed her abuser's wife. She said she spent her own life hiding the secret of the abuse and found it very hard to trust men.

She said it would be great for victims if it did not take so long for cases like this to get on trial and described the waiting and not knowing as an “awful ordeal to go through”.

O’Dwyer said that Owens “violated my body, my privacy and my choice to say ‘no’.”

“You manipulated and groomed me. I believed I was worthless, a piece of used goods, dirty and disgusting. You continued to live your life, taking no responsibly,” she said.

She told the court that after the offending came to light, Owens carried out a number of “walk-bys” in front of her business premises.

“Was this meant to intimidate or scare me? All it did was remind me of the bully you are,” she said.

She said for three decades she wore a smile that masked the trauma she bore while John Owens “waltzed around the place like you were lord of the manor”.

“Today I give you back the fear, the horror. You are a monster, an abuser, a sex offender,” she added.

Detective Garda Aidan Hynes of the Westmeath Divisional Protective Services Unit gave evidence that he was assigned to investigate allegations against the two men in May 2023 after Boyhan came forward.

He said that John Owens owned a quarry business in Mullingar, which he had taken over from his uncle.

Boylan was 15 when she began babysitting for Martin Owens and his wife, who had two young children. On one occasion the defendant called at the victim’s home and said she was needed for babysitting.

He drove her to his family home where nobody else was home. When the victim asked where everyone was Martin Owens told her they will be back. He then gave her a drink of coke which tasted like there was alcohol in it.

The victim asked him if there was something in it, and Owens laughed at her. The child then said she had to go home and Owens told her “you’ll be grand”.

He sat down beside her and put his leg on her bare leg and moved it inside her thigh. He was smiling at her “in a scary way” and saying to her: “it’ll be grand”.

He then led her down the hall into a bedroom, and the girl told him “you shouldn’t be doing this” and Owens replied “oh it’ll be grand”. He put a towel on the bed and told her to lie down.

He kept reassuring her as he took off her shorts and underwear and sexually assaulted her. He then put a condom on and had sexual intercourse with the child.

A plea of sexual assault was accepted was the Director of Public Prosecutions on the basis of the full facts being led in evidence, including that the physical act was sexual intercourse.

Other incidents of sexual assault took place in Trabolgan, Co Cork when Ms Boylan accompanied Martin Owens and his family on a family holiday there during the summer.

Martin Owens again plied the girl with drink and lured her to a pebble beach away where he sexually assaulted her. Ms Boylan later told gardai that she remembers thinking that it was not a beach, it was just stones, and she thinks she was detaching herself from what was happening.

On another occasion Martin Owens sexually assaulted Boylan at a holiday cottage while she was there with the family. Owens’ three-year-old son was in the next room when he molested her.

Dt Gda Hynes said the victim was worried about the child and in a panic while Owens was “laughing like it was a bit of devilment”.

The garda told the court that Boylan’s younger sister Lorraine Kieran went to gardai in 2023. She told gardaí she was asked to babysit for the Owens for five days in 1996 when their usual sitter was away.

She said on the first day Martin Owens was collecting her in his car. She said he took his hand off the steering wheel and placed it outside her jeans around her genitals and made a tickling gesture.

Kieran said she felt shocked at the time as she viewed Owens as a father figure. She was left wondering if she had sat with her legs too far apart or done something else wrong.

When she told a grown-up about it this person told her “don’t mind Martin Owens, he’s always around like that”.

When garda put the allegations to Martin Owens said he did not remember interacting with Ms Kieran. He accepted there was a relationship with Ms Boylan and said he thought she was aged around 16 or 17 at the time.

He described her as “a good, hard-working person” who was trustworthy and said “I wouldn’t run the girl down, I wouldn’t do that”. The court heard that Ms Boylan worked for the Owens quarry business for a number of years.

Fionnuala O’Sullivan SC, defending, told the court that Martin Owens accepts full responsibility and apologises for all his actions.

“He now understands in light of his age and the position he was in that what he did was completely inappropriate,” she said.

Sean Guerin SC, defending John Owens, told the court last February, that the defendant had offered €20,000 to each of the three victims as a token of his remorse. This has been accepted, he said.

Two persons connected with John Owens' businesses provided character references attesting to his otherwise good character. The referees said they knew John Owens as a man of integrity and compassion who was very well respected and highly thought of as a decent man.

The two men were originally set to face trial together but their legal teams successfully applied for separate trials.

After the sentence was passed on Monday, Vincent Heneghan SC, prosecuting, told the court that the victims of both brothers wished their waive their right to anonymity so that the Owens could be identified publicly.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call the national 24-hour Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800-77 8888, access text service and webchat options at drcc.ie/services/helpline/ or visit Rape Crisis Help. In the case of an emergency, always dial 999/112.