A former Christian Brother has secured a Supreme Court order preventing his trial on two charges of sexual assault against a boy in an industrial school on dates between 1964 and 1966.
The Supreme Court order comes after the DPP decided in 2001 not to proceed with a prosection of the same Brother on 19 charges of indecent and sexual assault against another boy (Boy A). Mr Justice McCracken commented yesterday that the DPP abandoned the prosecution regarding Boy A some time after the applicant Brother took legal proceedings challenging that prosecution.
The only reasonable inference from what had occurred was that the DPP had considered that the evidence of Boy A was not reliable, the judge remarked.
In granting an order prohibiting the trial concerning the complaints by Boy B (the complainant in this case, now a man in his fifties), Mr Justice McCracken said he did not regard the delay of some 30 years between the alleged assaults and the making of a complaint in 1995 as itself sufficient to prevent the trial. However, when the delay was considered in conjunction with other factors, including that the alleged victim had, in his initial statement, identified his assailant by another name and had only identified the applicant by his proper name after he was told that name by investigating gardaí, the judge said he considered there was "a real risk that the applicant's right to a fair trial would be in jeopardy".