UTV
December 14, 2011
http://www.u.tv/News/Former-priest-guilty-of-sex-assaults/ba09b96d-a679-4fef-b577-267d039d93c6
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A former priest has been unanimously convicted of sexually assaulting two men and attempting to sexually assault one of them.
53-year-old James Martin Donaghy was found guilty of four counts of indecent assault and one of an attempted sex attack.
Donaghy, from Lady Wallace Drive in Lisburn, stood impassive as the jury forewoman delivered the damning verdicts but relatives in the public gallery shook their heads in continued denial.
One charge of indecent assault relates to victim Father Patrick McCafferty where he told the jury he was sexually assaulted the night before Donaghy was ordained as a priest.
The other charges relate to evidence given by former altar boy James Doherty, also known as Seamus, who testified that as Father Charlie Agnew lay dead in the parochial house at St Michael's in Finaghy, Donaghy tried to sexually assault him
The evidence also claimed that five or six weeks after Fr Agnew died, he was sexually assaulted again in the same place.
The other count of indecent assault related to an incident at the parochial house in Corpus Christi where Donaghy had been moved to.
However, the jury are still deliberating on a further 21 charges dated between June 1983 and December 2000.
The charges relate to alleged indecent assaults and attempted sexual assaults on Fr McCafferty, Mr Doherty and a third alleged victim who cannot be identified, but who alleges he was abused when he was an altar boy and a trainee priest.
Trial Judge Patrick Lynch QC has now told the jury the "stage has been reached" where he can accept majority verdicts in the remaining charges where at least 10 jurors are agreed one way or another.
However he reminded them their "first duty" was to try to reach unanimous verdicts.
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