A 71-year-old Christian Brother who pleaded guilty to the sexual abuse of 25 boys at Letterfrack Industrial School over a 15-year period was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with the last four years suspended, at Galway Circuit Criminal Court yesterday.
Maurice Tobin, North Circular Road, Dublin, was a cook in St Joseph's Reformatory, Letterfrack. From the time he arrived there in 1959, aged 27, until the institution closed in 1974, he systematically molested, beat and buggered boys aged from 11 to 14 who were sent to work in his kitchen.
The accused, who was originally charged with 140 counts of buggery and indecent assault over three decades, pleaded guilty yesterday to 25 sample counts, including two charges of buggery and 23 charges of indecent assault.
Passing sentence, Judge Harvey Kenny said one could not but wonder that such violent sexual crime was allowed to go unchecked in Letterfrack.
Judge Kenny said the victims had been in the care of Letterfrack but the evidence before the court amounted to numerous assaults of a sexual, violent nature and all committed by a man in his prime against young boys, some as young as 11. The assaults, he said, were of a violent, sexual nature and were perpetrated in fear. For some of the victims, the violent experience was their introduction to sexual experience and was committed by a minder.
Some of the victims, the judge said, had travelled long distances and the case for some of them marked the end of a journey and brought some sort of closure on their life to date.
"I commend them for coming here today. Hopefully, they will derive some comfort from today. One cannot but wonder how such violent sexual assaults were allowed to go unchecked in Letterfrack. One victim believes Irish society is to blame. As it was then, nobody was listening," the judge said.
Sentencing Tobin to 12 years on two of the charges before the court, Judge Kenny said he was doing so owing to the frequency, the fear, the violence associated with the abuse and the effect it had on the victims.
Judge Kenny said he was satisfied having read medical and psychological reports handed into the court, that the accused would not reoffend and was genuinely remorseful. He noted that while he had not reoffended since leaving Letterfrack, he had not been working with children since that time either.
Taking into account Tobin's age and the fact that he had pleaded guilty at the earlier opportunity and was remorseful, Judge Kenny suspended the last four years of the sentence on condition that the accused have no contact with children and not commit any sex-related offence during that four-year period.