Toni Maguire - When Daddy Comes Home

There was an awful silence before he asked, ‘Were you raped?’

She didn’t even know what rape was. The doctor visited her mother and, between the two of them, they arranged for her to have a private abortion. It was all to be kept deadly quiet, for the sake of the family – but Antoinette had let someone else in to the secret. In her distress, she’d gone to a teacher’s house and told her the truth. The teacher in turn had gone to social services. Then Antoinette and her father were arrested.

She had told the police everything, from that day when she was six and it had all started. She had also told them that her mother did not know about what had happened. She believed this because she needed to.

To an observer, Antoinette looked quite calm and composed as she waited to be called in to give her evidence to the court. She sat silently, alone apart from the police. Her mother had not come that day. She was neatly dressed in a grey skirt and her old school blazer which hung loosely on her slight frame. Her dark brown hair, styled in a page-boy cut, fell to her shoulders. She was an attractive teenager with a woman’s body and a child’s vulnerable face. Her pallor and the dark circles smudged under her eyes showed the sleepless nights she had endured and a slight tremor in her right eye revealed the stress that she was under – apart from that, she was expressionless.

The recent abortion of her father’s child and the subsequent illness that followed had left her weak and exhausted. Shock and depression had given her an artificial calmness that appeared to others to be the composure of a child mature beyond her years.

Her emotions, too, were numb after her recent ordeal and, as she waited to be called, she felt very little. She knew that after the trial she would be going home to a mother who no longer loved her and a town who blamed her for everything she had suffered. Nevertheless, the years had taught her how to separate herself from her emotions and she remained outwardly calm.

Her wait ceased when the door of the courtroom swung open to allow the clerk of the court to walk briskly through. She knew that he had come to fetch her.

‘Antoinette Maguire, the judge has a few questions for you.’ He indicated that she should follow as he turned and walked back into the court.

The police sergeant and his wife smiled their encouragement but Antoinette did not notice. She concentrated on following the black-garbed clerk into the courtroom. Once inside, the silent pressure of the courtroom made her stop walking and, without looking, she could feel her father’s eyes boring into her from the dock. Everything else around her appeared stern and forbidding: the dark sombre gowns of the barristers, the vivid scarlet formal robes of the judge, their wigs and their serious expressions.

She stood in the waiting courtroom, a small figure overwhelmed by her surroundings, with no idea what was expected of her. The formality of the court both bewildered and disoriented her as she waited for instructions. Then she felt someone touch her arm and show her where to stand. In a trance she stepped into the witness box where little more than the top of her head could be seen, as the judge spoke to her, telling her, as the clerk had said, that he had just a few questions to ask her. The clerk gave her the Bible and, in a voice that quivered, she repeated the oath.

‘I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.’

‘Antoinette,’ said the judge, ‘I just want you to answer a few questions, then you will be free to go. Just answer them to the best of your ability. And remember that you are not on trial here. Can you do that?’

She finally raised her eyes to meet the judge’s, for the tone of his voice when he addressed her made her feel, that in some way, he was on her side. She kept her eyes focused on his. Then she could not see her father. ‘Yes.’

The judge leant over, put his arms on the edge of his bench and looked at her in as kindly a way as he could. ‘Did you at any time tell your mother about what was happening to you?’

‘No.’ She almost believed it to be true, for she had still blocked out the memory of when she had told her. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into the palms. She had thought that all her tears were dried up and she had nothing left to cry with but now they threatened to return. Her eyes prickled and stung but she used all her strength to hold them back. Nothing would let her cry in public and allow these strangers to see her shame.

‘Do you know the facts of life? Do you know how women become pregnant?’

The atmosphere was tense as everyone waited for Antoinette’s answer. She kept her eyes locked on the judge and tried to make the rest of the courtroom disappear as she whispered, ‘Yes.’

She sensed her father watching her and felt the tension in the room increase as the judge asked the final question. She heard the intake of breath when it came.

‘Then surely you must have been scared of becoming pregnant?’ It was a question she had been asked so many times, by social workers and the police and she told him exactly what she’d told them. She replied carefully, ‘He used something. It looked like a balloon and he said that it would stop me having a baby.’

There was a collective sigh as everyone in the court breathed out. She had confirmed what they had all suspected, that Joe Maguire had calculatingly and systematically abused his daughter from the age of six and after she had matured to the point where she had her first period, he had worn condoms.

With Antoinette’s answer, her father’s defence disintegrated. He had tried to claim that his actions were those of a sick man who had been overcome by his impulses. His daughter’s innocent description of a condom, something she did not even know the word for, gave the lie to this. His actions were not impulsive, they were premeditated. Joe Maguire was completely responsible for his actions.

The judge thanked her for her answers and told her she could leave the court. Still keeping her eyes averted to avoid her father’s stare, she walked back alone through the double doors into the waiting area.

She was not present when the judge handed down her father’s sentence. Her father’s solicitor, paid for by her mother, gave Antoinette the details half an hour later.

Joe Maguire had received a four-year prison sentence for a crime he had committed over a period that had spanned seven years. He would walk free in thirty months; one third of the time that Antoinette had suffered.

She felt nothing. For a long time, the only way she had kept her sanity was by not feeling anything at all.

‘Your father wants to see you,’ continued the solicitor. ‘He’s in the holding cells.’

Still trained to obey, she went to see her father. The interview was short. He stared at her arrogantly, still secure in the knowledge that he could control her, and told her to look after her mother. Unable to break the habit of being a good daughter, she said she would. He showed no concern as to who would look after his daughter.

As she left the cells, she was told that the judge wished to see her in his chambers. There, with his wig and scarlet gown removed, he seemed less imposing and more kindly. Seated in the small room, she took comfort from his words.

‘Antoinette, you will find, as I know you already have, that life is not fair. People will blame you, as they already have. But I want you to listen to me very carefully. I’ve seen the police reports. I’ve seen your medical reports. I know exactly what has happened to you, and I’m telling you that none of this was your fault. You have done nothing to be ashamed of.’ He smiled and then walked with her to his door.