Courts

Female teacher found guilty of sexually assaulting male student 38 years ago

Court heard abuse occurred while Jacintha McSherry O’Connor worked as a student teacher at a Dublin secondary school

Jacintha McSherry O'Connor made no reaction in court when the verdict was handed down. Photograph: Collins Courts

Isabel Hayes
Fri Oct 20 2023 - 16:32

A teacher who was on trial accused of sexually abusing a male student 38 years ago has been found guilty of the charges against her.

The jury in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court trial of Jacintha McSherry O’Connor (63) returned majority guilty verdicts on two counts of indecent assault on Friday after 11 hours of deliberating.

She made no reaction in court when the verdicts were handed down.

McSherry O’Connor, of The Mullins, Donegal Town, Co Donegal, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of indecently assaulting the child on dates between June 1st and September 1st, 1985. She was aged between 24 and 25 at the time of the offending, while the boy was aged 13.

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The court heard the abuse occurred while McSherry O’Connor worked as a student teacher at a Dublin secondary school. It was alleged she indecently assaulted the boy on two occasions in his home, where she had been giving him grinds.

The four-day trial also heard allegations of inappropriate sexual relations between McSherry O’Connor and the boy on a holiday she attended with his family in Spain in the run-up to the alleged offences. No charges were before the jury in relation to these alleged incidents as they pertained to a different jurisdiction.

The complainant in the case – now a man in his 50s – told the court that seeing his own children reach the age he was at the time of the incidents spurred him to go to gardaí, along with other unrelated high-profile cases. He said he was also concerned to see McSherry O’Connor was still teaching in Donegal.

After the verdicts were handed down, Judge Elma Sheahan thanked the jurors for their service. She exempted them from jury duty for three years.

She adjourned the case for a sentence hearing on November 8th and remanded the defendant on continuing bail.

It was the prosecution case that while giving the boy grinds at his home, McSherry O’Connor started having inappropriate conversations with him and discussing things of a sexual nature. He also visited her regularly in the home she lived in with her parents.

The prosecution alleged that this was a form of “grooming” on the part of McSherry O’Connor and that the complainant was “drawn in” as a result, and “infatuated” with his teacher.

The court heard McSherry O’Connor and a friend of hers accompanied the boy and his family on a holiday to Spain the summer he finished first year after getting a cheap deal. The two young women stayed in a separate apartment in the complex.

The complainant told the trial that it was on this holiday that the first sexual encounters occurred. He said McSherry O’Connor also gave him alcohol, which was the first time he got drunk.

After the holiday, the court heard of two further indecent assault incidents that occurred in the boy’s home – in the sittingroom and in the attic. The complainant said that although he initially felt like a “big man”, he became uncomfortable about his interactions with the teacher and told her he didn’t want to see her any more.

She had finished her work experience at the school by then and neither of them have had contact with each other since 1985, the court heard.

In his closing speech to, Garett McCormack BL, prosecuting, told the jury it should have “no doubt” in deciding the case, primarily because of the evidence of the complainant.

“These are difficult things for a man in his fifties to say,” Mr McCormack said. “Why would he say these things?” He said that despite a robust cross-examination from defence counsel, the man “did not waver” in his allegations.

The court heard the man told his first girlfriend at the age of 19 that he had been abused by McSherry O’Connor and this woman also gave evidence at the trial to that effect.

McSherry O’Connor took the stand during the trial and denied ever having sexual relations of any kind with the boy. She told the court that at the time of the alleged offences, she was in a relationship with the man who is now her husband.

When asked by prosecution counsel why the man might make up such an allegation, McSherry O’Connor said she didn’t know.

“He did say he fantasised about me, he was in love with me,” she said, later adding: “I don’t know why he brought the criminal case. If he told so many people, maybe they pushed him into it.”

The trial heard that when interviewed by gardaí, McSherry O’Connor said she remembered the boy as being “earnest, intense and driven”.

She said he was extremely helpful, would offer to carry her books and it became apparent to her that he had a “crush” on her. She said she was asked to give him grinds and that the boy “admitted” to her that he had asked his mother to arrange these grinds.

“Nothing untoward ever happened when I was giving him grinds in his house,” McSherry O’Connor told gardaí.

She said that after she had an unwelcome encounter with a senior teacher in the school, she “blurted out” to the boy what had happened to her. “After that, he became more obsessed with me,” she said. “I thought of him as a little brother.”

In his closing speech to the jury, Patrick McGrath SC, defending, pointed to a number of inconsistencies which he said “fundamentally call into question the reliability and perhaps the truthfulness of the complainant”.

Mr McGrath told the jury that McSherry O’Connor was “a person who has been a teacher for a long, long time” during which time nothing of this kind had been alleged against her. The court heard McSherry O’Connor has since been refused garda vetting to teach and is not currently working as a result.

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