A FORMER senior manager with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive has been jailed for 15 months after admitting that he sexually abused three young sisters over 11 years starting in 1973.
Last December John Quigley, (51), of Maybrook Mews in Derry, was given an 18-month jail sentence, suspended for three years, when he was sentenced for the offences at the city’s Crown Court.
However, the suspended sentence was referred by the Attorney General to the Court of Appeal and last week, in a reserved judgment, Lord Justice Higgins replaced the suspended sentence with a 15-month jail sentence. He also ordered Quigley to surrender himself into the custody of the prison service within three days.
Quigley, a father of two, has been placed on the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years and a Sexual Offender’s Prevention Order has also been imposed for 10 years, banning him from unsupervised contact with females under 18.
Quigley, who admitted a total of 14 indecent assault charges, committed the offences when he was babysitting. A prosecution barrister told the court during last December’s hearing that Quigley told one of his victims “it was their secret and not to tell anyone”.
A victim impact report on another of the three sisters stated that she had “subsequently suffered from depression and from chronic self-esteem”, and a similar report on the third sister stated that “the abuse had led to her depressive illness”. She requires anti-depressant medication and counselling and she will require long-term treatment for her depression.
In imposing the original suspended sentence, Judge Desmond Marrinan said he did so “after some considerable agonising”.
Judge Marrinan had been told that a psychiatric report stated there was no evidence that Quigley continued to have a fascination with children, and that a psychologist’s report stated that Quigley presented no current risk to women or young girls.