Teacher wins court order restraining indecency trial

A national school teacher yesterday won a High Court order restraining his trial on eight counts of indecent assault on a male pupil allegedly committed in the late 1960s.

In the ruling the High Court strongly criticised psychological evidence called by the State to explain a delay of more than 30 years in making complaints of indecent assault

The complaints against the teacher were made in 1999 after the man in question saw RTÉ's States of Fear, which dealt with abuse in institutions.

Yesterday Mr Justice Kearns noted that psychologists were often asked to give reports in such cases at very short notice and received "very modest remuneration" for their work. He said such unsatisfactory circumstances emphasised how difficult it was for any psychologist to provide useful assistance to any court in relation to explaining reasons for delay.

The complainant was one of three former pupils of the same school who, between 1997 and 1999, had made complaints of indecent assault against the applicant.

All of the charges relating to one of those complaints were withdrawn in 2001, and the DPP had also chosen not to show cause in relation to a second complainant. The only charges which then remained against the teacher were those made by the third complainant.

Mr Justice Kearns noted that the complainant was aged between 6-8 years at the time of the alleged offences and that the applicant teacher is now on leave of absence as a result of the charges. The complainant made his first complaint in 1999, alleging sexual abuse on dates between 1967 and 1968.

The complainant said he had told the school principal at the time what was done to him, but received "a sharp box" to the head and was told never to mention the matter again.

Because of this, he had never mentioned the assaults to his parents, siblings or wife. As a young adult, he began to drink heavily, lost a number of jobs and also became divorced.

In his decision, the judge said complainants in such cases were required to give an explanation for the delay in making complaints where as, in this case, the delay was substantial and inordinate. It was for that reason that the State called the evidence of psychologists.

There had been many judgments where trenchant criticism had been made of inadequate psychological evidence, he said. In this case, the psychological evidence failed virtually every requirement set out in those judgments.

There was no psychological evaluation or assessment of the complainant, obvious leads were not followed up and a very brief period of time, 1½ hours, was allotted to the entire exercise.

He was equally satisfied with the applicant's complaints that his right to a fair trial was prejudiced due to the delay.

In a second and separate case, Mr Justice Kearns also granted an order preventing the trial of a man on charges of rape and indecent assault of his first cousin, a female who was aged between 10 and 12 years when the alleged offences occurred on dates between 1966 and 1968.