Christian Brother accused of indecent assault on school trip
A Christian Brother who took a group of disadvantaged boys on holidays to Co Clare has gone on trial charged with indecently assaulting one of them.
The 62-year-old man has pleaded not guilty to committing the offence on a hill near Finore between August 3, 1985 and August 14, 1986.
He also pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to indecent assault on the same boy between August 1, 1987 and August 31, 1989 in the accused's home.
The now 37-year-old complainant told Ms Mary Rose Gearty BL, prosecuting, that he first met the accused around the age of 13 when the defendant worked as a liaison between staff and students at his school.
He said he and his friend were suspended from school and took the man up on his offer of lunch in a monastery. "Soup and sandwiches at lunchtime was a luxury for me then, so we went," he said.
He said that some time later, the accused and another Christian brother took him and other local boys on holiday for almost a week to Finore, Co Clare.
He and the accused became separated from the rest of the group during a hill walk and he said the Brother then indecently assaulted him at a large rock about a third of the way up the hill.
A couple of years later the accused drove into his neighbourhood and asked if he wanted to have lunch in his home. The accused drove him to his house, where he indecently assaulted him again.
The complainant agreed with Mr Felix McEnroy SC, defending, that he had never returned to Finore. He did not remember how many hills there were, or on which hill the alleged assault took place.
Mr McEnroy put it to him that there was no rock, but the complainant said there was. He said he did not remember a church but accepted that there was one.
He gave the names of the other boys who shared a mobile home with him in a large caravan park by the sea.
"I can still picture the mobile home in my head. We were underprivileged, unemployed school drop outs," he said, when asked what they had in common.
He said that some of the other boys would have viewed him as different. "I was probably one of the more picked on people in my area. I had a difficult life, yes," he agreed.
Mr McEnroy noted that the complainant had endured a lot of unhappiness as a child regarding how he was treated and fed.
He accepted that he got the dates wrong of the time he had been convicted of joyriding and agreed that his dates might also be wrong about the alleged assaults.
The trial continues before Judge Tony Hunt and a jury of six men and six women.
