A garda has been acquitted of raping his wife but convicted of child cruelty against his two daughters.The 48-year-old defendant went on trial in the Central Criminal Court at the end of last month accused of two counts of raping his then wife, two counts of child cruelty and one count of assault causing harm to his now 24-year-old daughter and one count of child cruelty against his now 17-year-old daughter.He had denied all the charges against him.On Friday, the jury returned its verdicts after more than nine hours of deliberations. They found the man not guilty of the two counts of raping his wife, which were alleged to have occurred on dates in 2009 and 2021.The jury found him guilty of all four counts relating to the two daughters. The cruelty offences against his older daughter occurred on unknown dates between 2007 and 2020 and the assault causing harm occurred on a date between late 2021 and early 2022 after she had turned 18.The child cruelty count against his younger daughter occurred on dates between 2015 and 2024.The defendant is a serving member of the Garda who has been on suspension since December 2024, pending the outcome of this prosecution. He has no previous convictions.He cannot be identified in order to protect the statutory rights of the complainants to anonymity. The offending took place at two locations in the northwest of the country where the family was living at the relevant times.Judge Sean Gillane said he would “reluctantly” remand the defendant on continuing bail after the court heard the Director of Public Prosecutions had no objections to it. The judge said this should not be taken as a signal in relation to the man’s sentence, noting he had now been convicted of a “serious indictable crime”.The court heard the defendant is now in a new relationship and the couple have a baby together.On day one of the trial at the Central Criminal Court, Dominic McGinn, prosecuting counsel, told the jury the accused was “a violent and domineering father and husband” who subjected two of his daughters to “unreasonable chastisement” for most of their childhood.In her evidence, the wife of the accused described two incidents, one in 2009 and another in 2021, when she said her husband raped her. She said she had told him she didn’t want sex, but he said he didn’t care and went ahead with it.His eldest daughter, now aged 24, testified that the family home had “an atmosphere of violence and threats” and that it felt like living in a military barracks growing up.She said on weekends she had to get up at 10am, and if she didn’t, a jug of cold water would be thrown over her.She said when she was 15, her father told her that her legs looked like the legs of a pool table and that was “a disgrace”. He began forcing her to go running daily, and the only way she could get out of it was by saying she was on her period.She said his behaviour towards the second complainant was more “emotional manipulation”, describing him as insulting. She said he once made her eat a bucket of KFC chicken until it made her sick and was “always on to her about her weight and her appearance”.James McGowan, defending counsel, told the jury that the witnesses were unreliable and the prosecution’s case was “simply incredible”.He said the allegation that his client was a rapist and capable of child cruelty was set against the background where his ex-partner, who alleges the rapes, is “happy” for the accused to have unsupervised access to the other younger children.The matter will return to court for a sentence hearing on July 27th.