A father who gave his three adolescent daughters alcohol before raping them repeatedly over a period of several years was yesterday jailed for 10 years after admitting the charges instead of standing trial by jury.

The 44-year-old man from Cospicua was facing a maximum prison term of 30 years.

The rapes went on for a number of years not specified in the bill of indictment and ended in 2010.

They started when the man asked his eldest daughter, who was only 12 at the time, to accompany him to an electronics shop with the excuse of possibly buying a Playstation or sound system.

But instead of taking her to the shop, they went to a bar where he bought her alcohol before taking her to a room in a field and raping her.

The rape of the other two daughters followed the same pattern, the Attorney General said in the bill of indictment. The repeated rape of the man’s first daughter only stopped when she told him she thought she was carrying his child.

His second daughter was also 12 when he started the abuse and 15 when he stopped, raping her once or twice a month for three years.

His third daughter was just 11 when he started. He raped her even as she was recovering from a stomach operation. She too was violated repeatedly until 2010.

The man individually swore the girls to secrecy on the life of a loved one, which left them believing they were the only one being raped, the court heard. The truth was finally exposed when two of them shared the secret and then went to their older sister, confirming that he had raped all three of them.

In court yesterday, the man also admitted to defiling them in their mother’s car by undressing them and touching them intimately.

The man is not being named to protect the identity of the girls.

In jailing the man for 10 years, Mr Justice Michael Mallia took into consideration the plea bargain that was reached between defence lawyers Anġlu Farrugia and Michael Sciriha and the Attorney General’s Office.

The man was placed on the sex offender’s register and a protection order has been issued on the girls, preventing him from coming into contact when he leaves prison.