IRELAND
The Journal
AN IRISH PRIEST whose trial for alleged sexual abuse crimes took over 13 years to come to completion has won €8,500 in damages at the European Court of Human Rights.
The priest, named only as ‘O’ in the proceedings, was accused of abusing a teenager in the early 1980s. The allegations were made in the mid-1990s, and charges were brought against him at a District Court in June 1997.
The case was then transferred to a Circuit Criminal Court, where in 1998 the trial was adjourned amid complaints of a conflict of interest by the trial judge, and a delay in releasing psychiatrist’s records relating to the priest’s alleged victim.
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