The man behind anti-drugs newsletter The Shrew has had his conviction and sentence for abusing a boy more than 20 years ago upheld by the Court of Appeal.
Joseph Anderson (71), with an address at Powers Court, Mount Street Lower, in Dublin had pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of sexual assault and one count of oral rape between August 1992 and May 1995 when the boy was aged between 12 and 15.
The Court of Appeal heard that Anderson was known for going around south Dublin suburbs with a camera, as part of his role in The Shrew, an anti-drugs newsletter, in the 1990s.
He was found guilty by a jury at the Central Criminal Court and sentenced to six years imprisonment by Mr Justice Paul Butler on July 28th, 2016. He had no previous convictions.
Anderson lost an appeal against his conviction on Friday with the Court of Appeal holding that the trial was satisfactory and his conviction safe.
Part of Anderson’s defence was a contention that the victim’s “repeated return” to his house was at odds with the proposition that the abuse occurred. It was relevant, not in the legal context of consent, but in the factual context of “the burnt child avoids the fire”, his lawyers submitted.
Giving judgment, Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said it was for the jury to attribute significance, or not, to the repeated return of the complainant to the defendant’s home and that the trial judge properly and sufficiently instructed the jury on this issue.
Turning to the question of sentence, Mr Justice McCarthy said Anderson deserved credit for his active opposition to drug dealing in the area in his role as the editor of a small privately published newspaper.
However, the effects on the victim had been “very grave”, the judge said. He did not, in his own words, “have a chance to grow up like normal people, because my childhood and my teens were interrupted in the most horrendous way”.
Mr Justice McCarthy said the victim left school early, rebelled, began to take drugs and to drink quite heavily.
While the trial judge did not explicitly refer to the evidence of what might be considered “grooming”, Mr Justice McCarthy said the court was satisfied the judge had regard to all relevant factors and he could not faulted.