A HIGH Court judge has awarded €400,000 damages to a woman against her former Irish dancing teacher after finding he sexually abused her as a child for seven years.
The woman, now a school-teacher in her 40s, had asked the court that the 68-year-old man be named but Mr Justice Seán Ryan said he would hear submissions on this on Friday before making a decision.
The €400,000 award includes €250,000 for suffering in the past and €150,000 damages into the future.
In his reserved judgment, Mr Justice Ryan said the defendant was a mature authority figure who exploited his access to a young girl for grossly immoral purposes and subverted her emotional and moral senses.
The woman had claimed the man engaged in “grooming activities” from when she first started dancing at the age of six. When the assaults began at 12 years of age, they increased in seriousness as she got older.
She said the assaults occurred between 1982 and 1989 at the dance classes and when she was being driven home from classes by him. On one occasion, he abused her when she was sleeping in his family home while there was another girl in the bed with her, she claimed.
The teacher denied all her allegations and claimed they were made up to “get back” at him because she was in love with him and he had spurned a suggestion that he leave his wife and live with her.
He was charged with indecent assault and underwent two trials in which juries were unable to reach verdicts after which the DPP entered a nolle prosequi in the case.
The woman then brought a High Court action for damages. She claimed the teacher had taken her childhood from her.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Ryan said that between 1992 and 1994 the woman received counselling and was persuaded by her counsellor and a social worker to make a complaint to gardaí. She was concerned the defendant might still be abusing other children, he noted.
The DPP decided not to prosecute and in the meantime, the woman left for the US where she got married, the judge said.
The Garda was still pursuing the matter and in 1997, on her return from the US, she made a second statement and the two criminal trials followed.
The defendant had brought High Court proceedings seeking to stop his prosecution after the first trial and these were eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court.
The judge said the proposition by the man that the woman concocted the allegations to get back at him was wholly unconvincing and did not accord with logic or with her behaviour. By contrast with the woman’s account and evidence given by a number of witnesses for her, including two other women who accused him of indecent behaviour, the man’s evidence was “inconsistent and unconvincing”, the judge said.
There was a conflict between the evidence the man gave to the High Court and his answers to questions from a garda investigating the matter. He had failed to refute the weight of evidence showing him to be an abuser of children, the judge said.
Mr Justice Ryan also found no issue arose as to whether the Statute of Limitations 1957 applied because of the delay in bringing proceedings.
The judge said he was satisfied the woman suffered from a serious psychological injury inflicted by the defendant, diagnosed as post-traumatic stress, which blocked her ability and will to bring proceedings. This condition meant she was suffering from a disability so as to prevent time running out for the taking of proceedings as is set down under section 48A of the statute, the judge said.