A Donegal priest has denied in evidence before a jury at the Central Criminal Court that he raped a teenage female parishioner over 20 years ago.
The 48-year-old defendant pleaded not guilty to three charges of raping a then 13-year-old girl on dates in 1985 and one charge of indecently assaulting her in 1984.
He told his counsel, Gerry O'Brien SC (with Gerry Charleton), on day four of his trial, that nothing untoward ever happened between them.
He said he never had sex with her in any place and never told her not to say anything to anyone. "There was never any need for anything like that," he said.
The priest said the complainant was never in his bedroom, as she claimed, and he never undressed in front of her, nor did he ever pull down her clothes. He also denied that he ever discussed her periods with her or had a family planning booklet with diagrams in her presence.
He told Mr O'Brien that he got a phone call from her in 1990, when he was in another parish, and she asked for £2,000 for an abortion. He found the call very annoying and told her that an abortion would destroy her life.
When he met her later he thought, "Thank God, she has had her baby," but she said she had an abortion and that her brother had paid for it.
He agreed with Mr O'Brien that her sister came to him once at the Parochial House and asked if the complainant had been with him the previous night and he told her to see the parish priest.
He denied he told her sister that he had given the complainant counselling in the Parochial House. "She was never in the Parochial House with me," he said.
The priest told Denis Vaughan Buckley SC (with Seán Guerin), prosecuting, that he was certain he never organised an open night for the youth of the parish, as had been claimed in agreed evidence given earlier in the trial.
He agreed he told gardaí that he heard the confessions of both the complainant and her best friend in the confessional, but had told the court on oath that he heard their confessions in the sacristy. His statement to the gardaí was his memory at the time.
He agreed that her evidence that he heard her confession in the sacristy was correct, but told Mr Vaughan Buckley it was "crazy" to claim he raped her afterwards.
"I have done very well to recall so much detail after 22 years," he said.
He agreed that around 1985 he told a now retired garda and another person that he was having trouble with the complainant and went back to them asking them to recall that claim. He didn't recall being agitated in 2003 when he asked them about his 1985 comment about her.
The trial continues.