A sports coach convicted of rape and sexual assault threatened to drop two teenage girls from his programme if they mentioned to anyone he had engaged in inappropriate sexual activity with them, a court has heard.The man (63) was convicted this month of three counts of rape, nine counts of oral and digital rape and 10 counts of sexual assault on one girl. He was also convicted of nine counts of sexual assault on the other girl. All offences occurred in 2020 and 2021.Det Gda Darragh McGuire, of the Kerry Protective Service Unit, told the Central Criminal Court sitting in Cork how the man began coaching one girl when she was 12. He became verbally and physically abusive, calling her names and slapping her if she did not perform in her sport.On one occasion he brought her to a remote rural location where he told her: “I could do anything to you out here, I could rape you, I could kill you”, the court heard. Later after asking her for kisses, he started trying to touch her and put his hand up her shirt.He escalated the abuse by getting the girl to perform sex acts on him, including while he was driving her to sports events. He once pulled into a church car park to get the girl, who was in her mid-teens, to perform a sex act on him.He raped her for the first time on June 10th, 2021, in Kerry. She told him to stop, but he disregarded her pleas and it hurt so much that she bit her arm with the pain. He also raped her a number of times at sports events around the country.These rapes occurred when the man took the girl away and he would book two rooms, the court heard. However, he would force her to join him in his room and after he had raped her she would fall asleep only to wake up to find him again having sex with her despite her asking him to stop.The man’s now ex-wife contacted the girl’s mother to say she believed he was having an inappropriate relationship with the girl as he used to flirt with her in her presence. She also witnessed him touching the girl.The girl denied to her parents that anything had happened, but it did lead her to tell her abuser that she was cutting her links with him. He became annoyed and accused her of being ungrateful given all he had done for her. It ultimately led to a Garda investigation.His abuse of the second girl began when he started touching her outside her clothing, the court heard. On one occasion, when the girl’s mother contacted him after she learned he had booked them both in one room, he told the girl’s mother: “I was hardly going to rape her.”The first girl, in her victim impact statement read out by the detective, told how the man “didn’t coach me or teach me – you hunted me ... You took away my innocence, something that can never be replaced, you broke the soul of a child”.“You normalised this behaviour – you used your position as my coach/mentor/teacher to manipulate and force me to things no teenager should ever have to do ... You left me alone and afraid … You threatened me, making me fear you to ensure my silence on what was happening,” she said.In her victim impact statement, the second girl said the man “filled me with dreams and hopes of becoming ‘the next big thing’ and then used those hopes to manipulate and control me – the psychological and sexual abuse I experienced at your hands has affected me deeply”.“One of the hardest things I carry is the guilt I felt when I learned that there were others after me. I remember thinking over and over again that if I had spoken sooner, may be they would have been spared the fear, the manipulation and the damage that you inflicted,” she said.Anne Rowland, prosecuting, said the DPP’s view was that the rapes were at the upper end of the scale, meriting a sentence of 10 to 15 years given the disparity in ages between the man and his victim, the breach of trust and the ongoing nature of the abuse.Ray Boland, defending, said his client did not accept the verdict of the jury, so there was no question of remorse being expressed. However, Boland said the man had no previous relevant convictions.Judge Siobhán Lankford thanked the young women for their impressive and eloquent victim impact statements, but said she needed time to consider the matter. She remanded the accused in continuing custody for sentence on June 3rd.