A Christian Brother who sexually assaulted boys over a period of many years has been jailed for eight years by Judge Frank O'Donnell at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Brother Patrick John Kelly, of St Helen's, York Road, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, pleaded guilty on November 24th to 53 charges, 51 of indecent assault and two of gross indecency. There were 150 charges on the indictment.
Victims, their families and friends applauded when the sentence was imposed and one of them shouted: "May God forgive you, you dirty bastard" as Kelly was brought down in handcuffs by prison officers.
Kelly's offences occurred in Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Wicklow, Kildare and Tipperary on dates from 1976 to 1988 and were committed in schools, his family home, the victims' family homes, and in a field.
Judge O'Donnell told him: "The Machiavellian machinations indulged by you makes this one of the worse cases I have ever dealt with. These were vile acts, acts so disgusting on boys whom you pounced on. You exploited their frailty, taking control of their body both mentally and physically.
"You breached their trust as a confidant of their families. You destroyed their childhood."
Judge O'Donnell reminded Kelly that one of his victims had gone through several jobs and thought it was not worth getting up in the morning, continually questioning life.
The judge added: "There was one aspect of the case that disturbed me and that was that you had in your own volition confronted your deviancy and sought therapy. But I realised after listening to the defence case that you had done this only because you had been discovered by peers in 1990. The bottom line is you have to serve eight years in prison".
He imposed two consecutive sentences of four years each on indecent assault charges and concurrent terms of two years on gross indecency charges and refused leave to appeal severity of sentence.
The court heard Kelly was a trusted family friend of several of his 11 victims and had himself been sexually abused by an uncle, from the age of four until he left home to join the Christian Brothers. He became suicidal when first confronted with the complaint against him and was sent to an English clinic for therapeutic treatment.
The victim, whose complaint sparked off the investigation and who campaigned for several years to have Kelly prosecuted, said his whole life had been tarnished and destroyed by it. He had had 40 psychiatric admissions and had attempted suicide 15 times.
He claimed that after he told his mother about the abuse she confronted the defendant, who said the victim was only "an alcoholic, liar and junkie". The victim was still having counselling from the Rape Crisis Centre.
Judge O'Donnell noted Kelly had denied initially any assault of this victim. "In labelling him an alcoholic, liar and junkie you were not only rejecting his allegations but pouring salt into the wound. This man has since counted the years, days and months since he was first assaulted by you," he told Kelly.
In evidence given previously, another victim said he had never changed his child's nappy for fear it would be claimed he had improperly touched the child because he himself had been abused.
"The day he pleaded guilty was a great day. The next day was even better, but it's not over for us even if it is now for him. It gets harder all the time," he said. He had "locked it away" for many years until the Garda investigation began and then told his girlfriend before telling his family.
The injured parties who gave evidence paid tribute to Sgt Denis Barry of Waterford who carried out a major part of the investigation of the case. Evidence was also given by Sgt John Madden of Rathmines and Sgt Don Mitchell of Tipperary.
Family members and friends of the victims wept and embraced each other in court during the hearing of the evidence. Kelly publicly apologised at the November hearing to his victims, their families, his family, former colleagues and the Irish Christian Brothers for the hurt, shame, disgrace and injury caused by his "criminal deviant behaviour for which I take full responsibility".
He said the victims' statements had seared on to his mind "the devastating effect my criminal sexual abuse had on them, the hurt inflicted on them and their deep sense of having being betrayed by their teacher".
This was something he would carry with him for the rest of his life. His "perverted sexual abuse" had deprived them of their childhood innocence which was something very precious they could never recover and could never be returned to them. That wrong could never be made good.
He realised he had once been held in high respect by other teachers and by his Christian Brother colleagues who "were totally unaware of my dark side". The vast majority of the order were "decent, honest men" who had spent their lives in Ireland and on the missions in good work for people but "to my deep shame, I have caused them to be tarred with the same brush".
Kelly appealed to people who were friends of his surviving family members in the past to stand by them in their need and to remember it was he and not they who did wrong.
The court heard that Kelly's father, sister and a niece died in a fire in 1983. He came from a harsh, impoverished background and was beaten by his alcoholic father when he heard about a sexual liaison the then 10-year-old Kelly had with another 10-year-old boy.
He was the eldest son and witnessed a lot of violence in the home, especially his father beating his mother, who ran off for various periods as a result. Kelly was gifted intellectually and was regarded initially as a very good teacher but one who practised harsh discipline with a lot of corporal punishment.