A primary schoolteacher jailed in 2000 for 10 years for raping a former pupil has been freed after he won his Supreme Court appeal on grounds of "remarkable" and "manifestly prejudicial" cross-examination of him at his trial by senior counsel for the DPP.
No retrial was ordered as the court considered, taking remission into account, that the teacher had substantially served his sentence.
The court also took into account that in a later trial, he was acquitted of sexual assaults of two witnesses who gave evidence against him in his earlier trial.
In his judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman said: "I have never heard or read a cross-examination like that featured in this case." Among questions put to the teacher were: "Do you masturbate?" and "You don't seem to have many erections."
There was also a reference to "Viagra and drugs of that nature".
The five-judge court unanimously found the teacher's conviction was unsafe as a result of a substantial part of the cross-examination by Anthony Sammon SC, of 473 questions, was conducted to establish that the teacher was creating a false view of his sexual disposition and to test his credibility.
However, while strongly critical of the cross-examination, the court stressed it was "an isolated incident" by a barrister of "considerable and deserved repute".
Chief Justice Mr Justice John Murray said a consideration of the cross-examination would lead to the conclusion that the jury was influenced by prejudicial questioning that had no admissible or evidential basis.
The duty of prosecuting counsel was not to obtain a conviction at all costs but to act fairly and objectively. Elements of the cross-examination were "intimidating, disparaging and, if not personally vilifying, demeaning".
Mr Justice Hardiman said the appellant was an unmarried teacher who held a high office in scouting organisation. On that basis, "remarkable" questions were put to him culminating in suggestions that he "fitted the bill" of "a vicious sexual abuser" with a profile of a person with "a perverted interest in terms of suffering from paedophilia".
Mr Sammon had argued he was justified by matters which occurred in direct examination of the teacher, including references to his involvement in scouting, being unmarried and being heterosexual, the judge noted. Mr Sammon also said his cross-examination was wholly and properly related to the matters at the centre of the case and was not objected to by the defence at trial.
Mr Justice Hardiman said suggestions that scouting activities revealed "a colossal appetite for engagements involving boys" had no conceivable reference to what Mr Sammon had said was the basis for that area of cross-examination.
Mr Justice Hardiman also disagreed that large parts of the cross-examination were justified by the teacher's assertion of being heterosexual.
Mr Sammon had suggested the teacher was unmarried because he was "a pervert". He had also asked the teacher to outline "his sexual make-up". When the teacher replied he was unmarried and, given his age, unlikely to marry, he had responded: "There's always Lisdoonvarna."
The attempt to suggest that involvement in scouting on the part of a bachelor schoolteacher was remotely suggestive of paedophilia was "insulting to a very reputable group of people, utterly lacking in logic and an attempt to appeal, in a court of law, to pure impressionistic prejudice", the judge said.
The appeal arose after the teacher was convicted in June 2000 of a number of offences of sexual assault and rape of a boy. He was jailed for 10 years. At a later trial, the teacher was acquitted of counts of sexual assault of two other boys.
