Priest Cleared of Indecent Assault

By Liam Heylin
Irish examiner
May 13, 2014

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/priest-cleared-of-indecent-assault-268491.html

The case against a priest accused of indecently assaulting a student in a school toilet on an unknown date in the mid-1980s has been dismissed after a trial at Cork District Court.

Liam O’Brien, aged 66, of Woodview, Mount Merrion Avenue, Blackrock, Dublin, was cleared yesterday of the single count of indecent assault on a 14-year-old boy, at Colaiste An Chroi Naofa, Carraig Na Bhfear, Co Cork, in the mid-1980s.

Judge Tim Lucey said one of the factors in favour of the defendant was that the alleged incident happened so long ago making it very difficult to defend.

“It is the defendant’s rights I have to be most careful of. The complainant has rights in other tribunals. But this is in criminal law and I have to be very careful.

“It has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. That is a very high bar to get over. I am not satisfied the case has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The judge added that something “may very well have happened”, but that he could not be sure on the evidence and he had to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant.

The complainant, who cannot be named, said he was travelling by train about three years ago when he saw a front page story in the Irish Examiner, where Ian Elliot of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland, invited anyone who had been to boarding school at Colaiste An Chroi Naofa, to tell him if he had been abused.

The complainant said yesterday that he saw this as his avenue or window and felt he could tell it to someone in authority whom he did not know and that it would be easier than talking to a family member or friend.

The complainant said that at an evening of study, supervised by Fr O’Brien, he left to go to the toilet in a cubicle and that the priest knocked on the door and gestured for him to show him his penis, that he, the accused took his penis in his hand while looking at the complainant in the eyes in a ‘degrading’ manner.

That was the evidence given by the complainant to John Brosnan, state solicitor for the area.

Fr O’Brien also testified. He claimed that no such thing ever happened.

Defence solicitor, Michael Staines, produced a memo made by Ian Elliot of the call made by the complainant and it referred to allegations against others but did not make reference to the matter at the centre of yesterday’s trial.

Mr Staines also submitted that there were inconsistencies in the evidence given by the complainant.

Mr Staines referred to the complaint first being made to the gardai 27 years after it allegedly happened, the complainant never having said it to anyone else and in that sense being made out of the blue.

Judge Lucey said he could understand how people suppressed painful and embarrassing memories.