Ex-brother Not Guilty of Sex Abuse

By Liam Heylin
Irish Examiner
April 17, 2015

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/ex-brother-not-guilty-of-sex-abuse-324487.html

The jury in the case of a former Christian Brother who denied charges of indecently assaulting a primary school boy in the 1970s reached verdicts of not guilty yesterday after two-and-a-half hours of deliberation

Louis Morgan, aged 66, of Glenmarian Rd, Portlaoise, denied four counts of indecent assault.

The jury gave their verdicts of not guilty on all four charges of indecently assaulting a boy, aged 8/9, in the mid-1970s at the Christian Brothers primary school on Blarney St, Cork.

In his charging of the jury, Judge David Riordan had referred to a witness who said he had been sexually assaulted by the same defendant when he was a boy in the same school.

“This evidence is not corroborative. He did not give evidence that he saw any of the acts complained of by (the complainant)... It was not produced to blacken the character of the accused. You are not to draw an inference,” the judge said.

“The reason why his evidence was given was to show you — if you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt — that his evidence would point to a system or a manner of going about things by the accused, if you accept the evidence.”

Mr Morgan told investigating gardai who put specifics of the allegations to him that they never happened and that he never sexually abused any student in his care.

The complainant had told the court the defendant would sit down on the edge of the bench, put his hand around his back, and then put his hand down his pants inside his underpants and touch his hips and buttocks. He said that in third class this went further and the brother would touch his penis.

“There was one incident where he put his hand between the cheeks of my buttocks, he put his finger up it. As he walked away you could see him smelling it,” he said.

The complainant told Ray Boland, prosecuting, of another recollection he had of being given out to by his father over something he had done at home one lunchtime. He claimed that when he went back to school, Mr Morgan put his hand down his pants and squeezed his genitals so hard he cried.

Mr Morgan denied that specific allegation and all others, and when the description of the alleged incident with his finger was put to him, he said to gardai: “I am disgusted by this, you can see my reaction. It never happened.”

When the general allegations were put to him by Donal O’Sullivan, defending, Mr Morgan said: “Totally false, untrue, that never happened.”