Update: Eamonn Cooke is now dead

March 2007

DJ put away for 10 years over abuse of girls in home

THE founder of pirate station Radio Dublin has been jailed for 10 years for sexually assaulting young girls at his home some 30 years ago.

Eamonn ‘Captain’ Cooke (70), with addresses at Heatherview Avenue, Tallaght and Wheatfields Court, Clondalkin, had been found guilty of 42 charges of sexual assault at the Central Criminal Court at the start of the month.

During the 16-day trial, the court heard his victims named him “the Cookie monster”.

Victims

Ms Justice Maureen Clark told the two victims and their friends and family: “It has been a long five or six years for all of you and maybe a lifetime for some. I hope today gives you some sense of finality and you never have to appear in court again.”

The judge sentenced Cooke to 10 years.

She added that the prison authorities were to take account of the 1,300 days Cooke had served after a previous conviction.

Insp Gerard Kelly told Patrick McCarthy, prosecuting, that Cooke had been convicted after a trial in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years for offences including attempted rape and indecent assault of four girls, including the two girls in this case.

But the 2003 conviction was later quashed due to a legal technicality and he was released in May 2006.

Cooke, who has 11 children between the ages of four and 18, continues to deny the 42 charges of indecent assault

Insp Kelly told Mr McCarthy that Cooke had eight previous convictions, including a four-year suspended sentence for an arson attack on one of the complainants involved in the 2003 trial.

This woman, who had attended court throughout the current trial, shouted at Cooke when the sentence had been read out. “I hope you rot in hell.”

Cooke, who has 11 children between the ages of four and 18, continues to deny the 42 charges of indecent assault on two complainants on dates from January 1974 to May 1978 at an address in Dublin.

He claimed the allegations were made to blacken his name.

One of the victims said the abuse started when she was aged about seven and continued until some time before her 11th birthday.

Naked

She said Cooke made them lie naked in his double bed while he lay between them, also naked.

She said he would face one of them and “fondle” them while he made the other stroke his back and his anus.

After these sex acts he would give her money, “sometimes even 50p”.

Another of the women said Cooke brought them into the garden, where he filmed them and told them to do the can-can.

The woman described how she used to lie awake at night convinced she had “a baby inside her” after learning the facts of life at school.

The woman said Cooke told them they would be put in a home if they told anyone.