A former Circuit Court judge convicted of sexually assaulting six young males on dates in the 1990s will receive a custodial sentence, the Central Criminal Court has heard.
Mr Justice Alexander Owens told the six survivors during a sentencing hearing on Monday that he will impose sentence on Gerard O’Brien on May 29th, it will involve a custodial element and will not be “wholly suspended”.
He said he had much to consider, including victim impact statements, reports on O’Brien and what services would be available in prison in light of the defendant’s disability.
As a result of Phocomelia, a rare birth defect, O’Brien (59), with an address in Thurles, Co Tipperary, was born without arms and just one leg and needs assistance in personal care.
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Then a serving judge, he was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury last December of sexually assaulting six males, aged between 17 and 24 at the time of the offences, and of the attempted rape of one.
The offences occurred on dates between 1991 and 1997 when O’Brien was a teacher at a second level school in Co Dublin. Four of the males were his pupils or former pupils and he knew the other two socially.
During the four week trial, five complainants gave evidence of how they, on separate occasions, stayed overnight, in O’Brien’s residence to help him in the morning with dressing and going to the toilet.
They said they had been drinking, as had O’Brien, and woke to find him performing sexual acts on them to which they had not consented.
One complainant said O’Brien sexually assaulted him while he was bringing him to the toilet in a pub. O’Brien, who denied the charges, was convicted on December 22nd last and remains on bail pending sentence.
Mr Justice Owens on Monday heard victim impact statements provided by three survivors, evidence concerning the assaults on all six and mitigation submissions. Probation, psychological and occupational therapy reports concerning O’Brien, and some character references, including from retired solicitor Dara Robinson, were also provided.
One survivor, reading from his victim impact statement, told the judge he was a fifth year pupil when he was assaulted after being “recruited” by O’Brien as a helper.
“I was hit with shock, loss of trust, shame and disappointment,” he said.
As a result, he said his behaviour became “erratic and unpredictable”; he lost interest in sports, music and academic achievement; and his physical health suffered due to “stress, upset, depression and worry”.
“Before I met Gerard O’Brien, I was a happy, outgoing and trusting person who felt safe and secure within myself. It is impossible to say how my life would have turned out had I not experienced his abuse of trust, his grooming and manipulative actions.”
Insp Jonathan Hayes, who lead the Garda investigation into the allegations against O’Brien, read the other two victim impact statements.
One survivor said he’d had “nothing but admiration for my teacher who had overcome so much in life” and he trusted him. However, he said O’Brien “betrayed me to my inner core” after assaulting him when aged 17.
“His actions have caused me a lifetime of chronic anxiety, a decade of zero self-worth, a suicide attempt and a nervous breakdown.”
In the other statement, the survivor said he was “a 16-year-old child” when O’Brien first asked him for help going to the toilet. In hindsight, he said he wondered why should young pupils have been taking him to the toilet when he was “surrounded by adult staff teachers”.
It was in that environment O’Brien’s inappropriate sexual behaviour began, he said. For many years he said he believed he was “stupid and naive to let this happen to me but now I believe I was being manipulated and abused”.
The behaviour always felt “strange and confusing” until the pub incident “where I knew you had sexually assaulted me”.
In mitigation submissions for O’Brien, Michael O’Higgins SC said this was not a straightforward case and O’Brien did not fit a “caricature” of an unkind and predatory person.
The probation report, he said, referred to O’Brien engaging in “sophisticated” grooming while the psychologist’s report disclosed he has unresolved trauma as a victim of sexual abuse when he was a child. The report described O’Brien as psychologically vulnerable and as having low self-esteem.
While he has done well on some fronts, including in his legal career, his client had regrettably done “terrible things” on other fronts. No person was all good or all bad, he said, and O’Brien had “scaled very lofty heights” but has “lost everything”.
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