Priest acquitted of indecently assaulting altar boy at parochial house in Limerick parish

A PRIEST has been found not guilty of indecently assaulting an altar boy at the parochial house in the Limerick parish where he worked.

The 63-year-old had pleaded not guilty to eight charges relating to offences which the State had alleged occurred over a three year period in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Following just under two hours of deliberations this Friday afternoon, the jury returned to Limerick Circuit Court to return unanimous not guilty verdicts.

The defendant, who was sitting directly across from the jurors, placed his head in his hands and cried as the registrar read out each verdict one-by-one. 

The complainant, who is now aged in his 40s, had given evidence that he was indecently assaulted at the parochial house where the then curate lived.

The man, who was in primary school at the time, said he used to do “menial jobs” for the priest such as washing his car and cutting his grass and that the abuse had happened when he went to get paid.

He described how on one occasion while in the sitting room of the house the priest lifted him onto his lap and began arousing himself.

“He used his hands to touch and feel me,” he said adding that he placed his hand inside his pants.

In his evidence, the accused man insisted the allegations were not true. “In my heart and soul I know I did nothing wrong,” he said adding he was shocked when the allegations were first put to him by gardai in 2016.

“That did not happen, that did not happen,” he said.

Earlier his barrister Mark Nicholas, SC, put it to the complainant that aspects of his evidence were vague and lacked in detail.

“There is a looseness with the detail in your evidence,” said Mr Nicholas who submitted his version of events was “highly improbable” and could not have happened.

Mr Nicholas said their was uncertainty relating to dates and times and he asked why he had waited so long to make a complaint to gardai?

He also put it to the witness that there were significant differences between his evidence in court and what he told gardai in his statement of complaint.

“You changed your story, it’s a moving of the goal posts,” he said. 

After the jury returned its verdict, Judge Tom O’Donnell thanked the jurors for their attention during the four-day trial.

He said it was a “very very difficult” case and he excused them from further jury service for five years.