IRELAND
Irish Examiner
By Liam Heylin
The priest on trial for a sex assault on a teenage boy in the sick bay of a boarding school in 1979 told the jury he had admitted sexually assaulting 10 other boys, but that he did not touch the complainant.
Prosecution barrister Pearse Sreenan asked the former dean of discipline at the school in Carraig na bhFear, Co Cork, Tadhg O’Dalaigh, 70, of Woodview, Mount Merrion Avenue, Blackrock, Dublin, how he could remember all of the boys given that there were so many.
“Did you keep a diary?” Mr Sreenan asked.
“No I did not keep a diary,” O’Dalaigh replied. “I would prefer to plead guilty [if it had happened] and move on, get the thing over and done with, but I did not, I did not touch him… I don’t know if he was abused or not, but I certainly did not abuse him.”
Mr Sreenan said, by O’Dalaigh’s own admission, he abused 10 boys, the last in 1984, and by 1995 he was able to identify every one of them. The barrister asked how he could remember.
“You would feel very, very guilty about it,” the accused said. “You would be conscious of being kind to them. It would not be the event and finished with it, it would be making efforts not to antagonise them in any way so they won’t make any complaint.”
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