PRIEST JAILED FOR TWO YEARS FOR MOLESTING YOUNG NEPHEW
A WEXFORD priest has been jailed for indecently assaulting a young nephew in the 1980s.
The man, who pleaded guilty to three charges of indecent assault of the child, was sentenced to three years in prison with the final year suspended when he came before Judge Cormac Quinn at Wexford Circuit Criminal Court last week.
He cannot be named in order to protect the identity of his victim.
The defendant, who had no previous convictions, was accused of indecent assault on dates between September 5, 1984, and September 5, 1985, at a location in County Wexford and also in an outside county.
Det. Garda Patrick O’Brien told the court that a statement of complaint alleging four separate incidents of indecent assault had been made to the gardaí in September 2016.
He said the victim was abused for the first time at the age of around six in a hayshed during a visit to the home of the accused.
He was alone with the man who hugged him and then lay across him, putting his hand down his trousers and touching his private parts.
The victim recalled the defendant breathing heavily and said that the incident lasted all of ten minutes. He said his brothers had been in the hayshed earlier, but they did not witness anything.
Det. O’Brien told the court that the victim said he was aged around seven when the second offence took place while he was playing in a field at a location in a county outside of Wexford.
He said that having isolated the boy, the uncle began to hug him before molesting him in a manner similar to the previous incident.
The victim recalled the accused man moving back and forward in an excited state and breathing heavily.
Det O’Brien said the victim recalled he was aged nine or ten at the time of the next incident, when he was walking with his uncle on a beach.
He said the man got on top of him and abused him in a manner similar to the previous encounters. He said that they were the only two people who had gone for the walk.
He also said that the accused was breathing heavily, became excited and gyrated in a sexual way.
Det. O’Brien told the court that the accused had sent a letter of apology but it was not accepted. The defendant met with the detective voluntarily. He had been given legal advice not to answer any questions but was co-operative to an extent.
Det. O’Brien said he believed the accused is still a priest but effectively retired.
Defence Counsel, Philip Sheahan, told the court that the defendant was sent forward for trial from the District Court on June 25, 2018. He was arraigned on October 2, 2018, where a guilty plea was entered at the first available opportunity.
Mr. Sheahan said it was accepted that a total of €10,400 in cash was handed over to the victim, the result of some form of a family agreement, but the defendant was not the instigator of this.
Mr. Sheahan said a complaint was first made in 1988 but was withdrawn on August 22, 1998. Det. O’Brien agreed with Mr. Sheahan that he later took a statement from the complainent on December 10, 2015, in relation to the matter.
In a Victim Impact Statement read to the court, the complainent said the assaults only stopped when he was old enough to push his uncle away.
He said it was difficult to write down the impact the assaults had on him as there was no time in his life he could recall not being impacted by the abuse.
‘The more powerful memory I have is one of fear. It has been with me my entire life and it’s only in latter years that I realise the damage it has done to my mental health. Given the fact that he was my uncle it was put to me to forgive and forget,’ he said.
Defence Counsel, Mr. Sheahan, said the accused entered a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity, made full admissions and co-operated with the gardai. He said that while the letter of apology was not accepted by the complainant, which is his entitlement, it was still a mitigating factor.
He maintained that the court should take into account the length of time that had elapsed since the offences. He said the defendant had been engaged in rehabilitation for a considerable time.
With regard to the payment of cash to the victim, Mr. Sheahan said that the defendant was not the architect of that proposal. Rightly or wrongly, he said, the family financial arrangement was reached with a view to putting an end to it, but the injured party was entitled to take the course he did.
The defendant will now be a convicted sex offender, a label that will travel with him for the rest of his days, while he will also be on the Register of Sex.
The effect of a custodial sentence, said Mr. Sheahan, is magnified by his age.
Asking the court to hand down as lenient a sentence as possible, he said: ‘It is a difficult sentence balance to accommodate, given the age factor, but it should take into account the penalty of him being deemed a public sex offender, which is a punishment in itself.’
Judge Quinn said the aggravating factors were the age of the victim, the serious breach of trust, and the impact the abuse has had on the family dynamic.
He said there was obviously an element of cover-up, and there was an apology to the victim which was not accepted.
The payment of money was also an aggravating factor, and while the accused was not involved in this, one had to take into account the effects all of this had on the victim.
The judge said that mitigating factors included the defendant’s age, the early plea of guilty, the fact that the defendant met the gardai voluntarily, the Probation and Welfare report, and the letter of apology.
He also said that the risk assessment was outlined as moderate in the probation report.
He said he would also take into account the antiquity of the offences and the fact that the defendant would be placed on the Sex Offenders Register.
Judge Quinn sentenced the man to three years in prison, on one count, with one year concurrent sentence on two charges, with a nolle prosequi – or non pursuit of the prosecution – on the final charge.
He said that in view of the probation report he would suspend the last twelve months of the three-year sentence for a period of twelve months on the defendant entering a bond of €200 to keep the peace and be of good behaviour while in prison and on his release.
The court ordered that on his release, he is to come under the supervision of the Probation Services for twelve months and also to comply with all directions as included in the probation report.