No decision made on naming child rapist

Lawyers for a child rapist have told the High Court that a law protecting child victims of crime indirectly prevents the court from allowing publication of the convicted abuser’s identity.

The 56-year-old man pleaded guilty in 2015 at the Central Criminal Court to the repeated rape and sexual assault of his wife’s two sons at his Co Wicklow home over a ten-year period. The victims were under ten years old when the abuse started in 1993 and the attacks continued for a decade.

At that sentencing, the victims, who are now adults, told the court they wished to waive their statutory anonymity so their step-father can be named publicly. However, because there were related cases to be prosecuted at Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court, Mr Justice Tony Hunt placed a stay on the waiving of the anonymity.

At a hearing last July, Paul Murray SC, prosecuting, told Mr Justice Hunt that the Wicklow trials ended in June and that the DPP is now asking the court to lift the order preventing the man’s identify being published.

A number of hearings have since taken place and the man has changed his legal team a number of times. Last month Mr Justice Hunt noted that the man “may or may not be” using a tactic to delay the publication of his identity.

At another hearing, the man told Mr Justice Hunt that he would be in danger if his identity is published. He said he didn’t think “it would be the best thing” for him right now and said he is currently in therapy.

Mr Justice Hunt told him on that occasion that the anonymity and any waiving of it was there to benefit the victims.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning the court heard that the man had taken on another new legal team. Patrick Gageby SC told the court that he had only just come into the case.

He handed into court a letter from his client, which he described as a “plea for mercy” which doesn’t “throw up any legal issues”.

He submitted that the case was covered by the Children Act 2001 which provides for anonymity for child victims or child witnesses in a criminal prosecution.

Mr Gageby said that according to this act, the court may dispense with these reporting restrictions “if it is satisfied that it is appropriate to do so in the interests of the child”.

He said “it was hard to see” how it could be in the interests of the child victims in this case to have their identity published.

Mr Murray told the court that in this case the complainants wished to be named.

Mr Justice Hunt said that “at first blush” this had seemed a straight forward application but that has not turned out to be the case. He said that “after all this time” there was no sense in rushing “headlong” into it.

He adjourned the case to next Tuesday to allow both sides to make further arguments to the court.