Paedo dad is caged for having sex with his daughter, 15

A paedophile dad who got his teen daughter drunk at a party and had sex with her, was caged for five years on Thursday.

Brave Cherie Thunder, 22, unmasked Andrew Durran, who skipped the country after the attack.

She agreed to drop her right to anonymity so the monster could be named and shamed.

The callous thug, 41, betrayed her after they were reunited following his split from her mother, Ms Thunder told a court in a statement read by a prosecutor on Thursday.

She said: “The day my father will walk free, I will be serving the life sentence he imposed on me.”

The mum of three said the 2007 attack at a house party when she was 15 was “like something out of a horror film”.

Cowardly Durran fled the country in 2009 during the investigation but was brought back from Spain on a European arrest warrant in December 2012.

He has been in custody since.

The father of seven, with a previous address at Dromheath Avenue in Dublin’s Blanchardstown, took a trial date but eventually pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to defilement of a child at Parlickstown Drive, Mulhuddart, on January 21, 2007.

He has 16 previous convictions for road traffic offences and a five-year sentence for assault from 1994.

Det Gda Tom Cooney told Garret Baker, prosecuting, Durran lost contact with Cherie from when she was aged 10 until a few months before the crime following a split with her mother.

The father and daughter met up again in November 2006 when she got his phone number from a cousin.

Det Gda Cooney said Durran separated from another partner around New Year’s Eve 2006.

friend at the Parlickstown Drive premises, where he let his then 15-year-old daughter drink six glasses of vodka and Red Bull at the party.

Cherie went upstairs feeling intoxicated and lay on a bed in her underwear in the spare room she was sharing with her dad.

A short time later she heard Durran come into the room and get into bed. He turned her over, pulled her on top of him and lay her back down to remove her underwear.

He then pulled his daughter on top of him again and had sex with her. She later told gardai she said nothing and kept her eyes closed during the
incident.

In a letter read out in court, Cherie revealed when she made contact with Durran after years of separation: “I really felt the father-daughter bond and I believed he felt it too.”

She said she realised in hindsight there were “bad signs” from the start.

Cherie noticed how he had more interest in seeing her even though she had other siblings and that he had been grooming through buying her “alcohol and smokes”.

She said she still struggles to sleep, feels uncomfortable around men and deep depression can hit at any time.

Det Gda Cooney said Cherie left the room shortly after her father and told a female in the house what had happened.

She then rang her mother, who told her to go to her grandmother’s house.

Gardai arrived at the home to meet her and take her to hospital.

Durran met voluntarily with officers after the incident and told them his daughter had been “very clingy to me” by hanging out of his neck and trying to get “jockey backs” from him at the party.

He said he helped her get out of her tights when she went up to bed and gave her a kiss on the cheek, before going back downstairs to continue drinking.

Durran claimed his daughter returned to the party a short time later, but they both eventually went up to bed.

He told gardai he fell asleep after he let her use his phone and woke up to find the girl moving on top of him and kissing him on the face and lips. He claimed he didn’t know if he’d had sex.

Det Gda Cooney agreed with Caroline Biggs, defending, her client had “fundamentally” accepted penetration occurred and he was “gutted and suicidal as a result”.

Ms Biggs told Judge Mary Ellen Ring her client pleaded guilty to the offence to spare his daughter giving evidence.

Judge Ring imposed a seven-year sentence backdated to December 2012 and suspended the final 12 months. Last night, a source close to the victim said: “It’s been a few difficult years for Cherie.

“The conviction doesn’t change anything. She wasn’t happy or sad about it. She was numb.

“She just wants people to know who he is, what he has done, for people to be able to stand up.”

SOURCE-IRISH MIRROR