A RETIRED priest accused of sexually assaulting a woman when she was a 14-year-old schoolgirl yesterday told a court the assault never happened and he believed the woman had invented the story.
Fr Daniel Duane (73), of the Presbytery, Cecilstown, Mallow, Co Cork denies a single charge of indecently assaulting the woman when she was aged 14 at a house at Bellvue in Mallow in the summer of 1980.
Yesterday, Fr Duane took the stand at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to deny he ever sexually assaulted the woman who had alleged the assault happened when she went on her own to visit the priest in the house he shared with another priest in 1980.
“No, I have no recollection of that,” said Fr Duane adding he accepted she had visited him on her own for discussions about how she felt isolated but he said those visits did not start until 1984 when she was 18 and not in 1980 when she was aged 14.
He also denied an allegation by the woman that when she visited him in Buttevant in 1986 when she was 20, that he asked her if she ever thought of him when she was sexually aroused or that he put his hands inside her clothes and touched her breasts. He also said she visited him at his house in Kanturk in 1992, just before she got married, where she apologised for an incident where a former boyfriend of hers had confronted him and accused him of raping her.
He said she also told him she was about to get married but she did not like the idea of anyone touching her lower abdomen and she did not like the idea of becoming pregnant and having a baby in her body and he told her to discuss it with her future husband.
Cross-examined by barrister for the State, Don McCarthy, Fr Duane said he was working in 1980 as a career guidance teacher in St Colman’s in Fermoy and did not get home each day until 6pm but he accepted that he was in Mallow that summer and that he stayed in the house at Bellvue.
Fr Duane said his housekeeper was always at the house but pressed by Mr McCarthy, he agreed there were times she was not there and it would have been possible for the girl to call to the house without the housekeeper or other priest knowing about it.
The trial continues.