Liam Adams Jailed For Raping Daughter

Liam Adams, a younger brother of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, has been sentenced to 16 years in jail for raping his daughter.

Adams, 58, from Bernagh Drive in Belfast, was convicted of 10 charges – three of rape, three of gross indecency and four of indecent assault.

Judge Corinne Philpott QC handed down the sentence, which included a further two years on probation, at Belfast Crown Court.

She told the court Adams had committed the “greatest breach of trust imaginable”.

Dressed in brown jacket, jeans and blue checked shirt, Adams showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down.

His trial heard that the offences were committed between March 1977 and March 1983 when his daughter was aged between four and nine years old.

Aine Adams, who has waived her right to anonymity, told police her mother and uncle Gerry had confronted her father but he denied any wrongdoing.

She and her mother reported the abuse but later retracted because they felt police were more interested in the politics of her father and uncle.

Liam Adams initially denied being confronted by his brother because he said they had been brought up not to talk to the police about Gerry Adams.

Aine’s mother, Sarah Campbell, told her ex-husband’s trial she had first learned of the abuse following a disagreement with her daughter shortly before Christmas, 1986.

She found a note which her daughter had written. It read: “Mummy, this is why I am like this. Daddy made me sleep with him.”

When Aine made the allegations public in a 2009 television documentary, Liam Adams fled to the Irish Republic, claiming he would not get a fair trial.

A short time later, Gerry Adams revealed that his father, also called Gerry, a veteran IRA man, had physically and sexually assaulted members of the family.

Liam Adams later handed himself in at a police station in County Sligo but could not be detained because officers did not have the correct documentation.

He was eventually handed over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland at the Irish border after a lengthy and expensive extradition battle.

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Liam Adams Jailed For Raping Daughter