A PRIMARY school teacher who was jailed previously for sexual offences against pupils has been given a three-year sentence by Mr Justice Paul Carney for indecently assaulting another female pupil 26 years ago.
Patrick O’Connell (54), a native of Limerick with an address at Seacrest, Galway, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to indecently assaulting a then 12-year-old girl on a date between April 1st and June 30th, 1982.
The now 39-year-old married mother of three told Mr Justice Carney that she suffers regular nightmares of O’Connell being on top of her eldest daughter.
She said that since the assault she was afraid to be left alone with any man, apart from her husband and her father. She felt that while this matter was now over for O’Connell it wasn’t for her.
“It will stay with me my whole life,” she said. “I reported his assault for my own sake, my family’s sake and for all other innocent children.”
Mr Justice Carney imposed a three-year sentence which he backdated two weeks.
Det Garda Annalise Hannigan told Gerard Clarke SC, prosecuting, that the victim had been attending a sports event with her other classmates and O’Connell when he reprimanded her for “messing on the bus” and told her to stay back after school to fill out some forms.
She later told gardaí that she was worried he would tell her parents about her bad behaviour and she was nervous and apprehensive about being told to stay back.
She said that O’Connell made her lie down on the ground telling her that he was going to relax her legs, before he indecently assaulted her.
She said she had not fully appreciated at the time what had happened and it wasn’t until she got sex education at school as a 15-year-old that she realised it was a criminal offence.
Det Gda Hannigan agreed with defence counsel Peter Finlay that O’Connell was a divorced man with one child who had not come to Garda attention since his release from custody in June 2003.
She accepted that since then he had regularly gone to France with his French partner and on each occasion surrendered his passport to gardaí on his return.
Mr Finlay submitted that O’Connell had tried “to rebuild his life” since his earlier convictions and marriage breakdown and that a probation report indicated he now represented a “low risk to society”.
He asked Mr Justice Carney to take into account that O’Connell’s registration as a sex offender had had a massive implication for someone like him.
“He now just wants to live a meaningful and productive life having paid his debt to society.”