A judge has jailed an 80-year old former Limerick Scout Leader to six years and eight months in prison for molesting five young boys, all scouts, “who still believed in Santa” in the 1970s and early 1980s.
At Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Francis Comerford imposed a 16-month prison term on Jim Harmon of Pinewood, Shannon for each of the five boys he indecently assaulted over a six-year period between 1976 and 1981 at locations in Clare and Limerick.
Addressing the five complainants in court - all now men in their 50s - Judge Comerford said that they have been “denied justice for a very, very long time”.
Harmon was aged 33 to 38 during the period of the indecent assaults and the counts of indecent assaults took place at Cratloe in south east Clare, Holy Island on Lough Derg, Garryowen, Limerick and the Ennis Road, Limerick.
Victim impact statement
One of the five in his victim impact statement said that he has carried what happened to him for decades “and those decades are matched by the others who brought this case”.
He said: “I therefore hope the court can appreciate that five of us in our 50s nearly have 250 years of hurt; the ripples add many more years to this, this is the impact of evil”.
The man said that Harmon’s victims were “young children seven and eight years of age, children who still believed in Santa who were supposed to have innocence in their lives, making their Communions”.
He said that the lives of Harmon’s victims “have been forever altered and corrupted by the deviant nature of a predator”.
He said: “We know that predators do not operate in isolation so are we five just the unluckiest children - or are there more?”
Describing Harmon as a “prolific paedophile”, another victim told the court that “this predator used a position of trust to deceive parents and their children to repeatedly molest vulnerable young boys with no regard for the impact his actions had on his many young victims”.
The man said that he is thankful for the decent life he has achieved “despite the devious efforts of Jim Harmon to destroy my innocence for his now perverted pleasure”.
Judge Comerford noted that one of the five informed his mother that Jim Harmon - who lived in the Garryown area of Limerick at the time of his offending - had indecently assaulted him as far back as 1981 while in the scouts.
The boy’s mother in turn informed local scouting authorities, who took action against Mr Harmon and dismissed him from his senior scouting role in 1982.
Judge Comerford said that “it didn’t go any further” and gardaí were not informed at the time by the scouting authorities or Mr Harmon's offending.
Complaints
Judge Comerford said that a complaint by one of the five to gardaí in 1996 about Mr Harmon “went nowhere” while the DPP recommended that no prosecution take place against Mr Harmon concerning a complaint by the same man in 2014 and made the same direction concerning a separate complaint by another victim in 2016.
Judge Comerford stated that it was only after Scouting Ireland had set up a helpline for those abused by adults in the organisation that another man came forward to make a complaint against Mr Harmon and the older complaints were reviewed.
Judge Comerford said that the current ‘exhaustive' Garda investigation that resulted in Mr Harmon’s guilty pleas involved gardaí taking 80 witness statements.
Counsel for the State, Lorcan Connolly BL (instructed by State Solicitor, Aisling Casey) said that in the 1970s Mr Harmon was well respected in Limerick scouting circle and had the trust of families to bring their boys away on overnight camping trips.
One of the five, Ruairi Hickey (54) told gardaí that Harmon molested him when he was 9 or 10 while the two played chess on a scouting trip to Holy Island in Co Clare.
Two other boys were on the same scouting trip and in his victim impact statement, Mr Hickey - originally from Limerick’s North Circular Road - said: “I remember seeing the other two walking away and being powerless, knowing and dreading what was to come."
Mr Hickey also recalled another scout visit with Harmon to O’Brien’s Estate, Cratloe, Co Clare where Harmon lined up the boys present in their underpants and measured their bodies with a soft measuring tape.
The only one of the five to waive his anonymity, Mr Hickey said that Harmon measured him from his inner thigh to his hip, brushing against his genitals.
Mr Hickey said that Harmon’s abuse was regular.
Harmon was Leader of the 2nd Limerick Troop and another victim said on camping trips, Jim Harmon “told scouts that they weren’t allowed to wear underpants under their pyjamas”.
He said at night, Mr Harmon would come into the tent at night and put his hands into their pyjamas.
Referring to Jim Harmon, the man told gardaí that “Oh f**k, who is going to be in the tent tonight?”
He said another time, Harmon had boys strip to their underwear on the pretence of undergoing a physical examination where he felt their genitals and told them they had passed "and they were great young men”.
Mr Connolly told the court that in a "remarkable coincidence” another one of the five first disclosed Harmon’s abuse for the first time during a telesales call in the early 2000s to a man who also happened to be a victim of Harmon’s.
Both men had lived in Limerick and were in the local scouts.
Sgt Niall Donovan of Roxboro Garda Station, Limerick, told the court that Harmon has one previous conviction in 2017 at Waterford Circuit Court for indecent assault of a young boy scout in 1976 where he received a suspended one year and three months.
Sgt Donovan said that Harmon married a widowed woman in 1994 and was step-father to her five children. He said that the couple took in a six-year-old under a foster care arrangements with the HSE. Mr Harmon's wife died in 2000.
Sgt Donovan said that Mr Harmon worked as ground crew for the RAF from 1960 to 1973 and worked with now defunct semi-state agency, Shannon Development from 1973 to 2003 where he had a number of roles including Euro Information Officer.
Counsel for Mr Harmon, Donal Cronin BL said that Mr Harmon is alone in this world after becoming estranged from his family following the Waterford case.
Mr Cronin said that Mr Harmon was himself a victim of similar type behaviour in the past and expresses profound regret for his actions.
He said more than 40 years have passed since Mr Harmon left the scouts and there has been no further evidence of wrongdoing.
Speaking after Mr Harmon was jailed today, one of the five outside Ennis courthouse said he was happy with the sentence imposed.
He said: “I wanted him convicted. I wanted him going somewhere. I wanted him to hear the cell door close behind him.”
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call the national 24-hour Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800-77 8888, access text service and webchat options at drcc.ie/services/helpline/ or visit Rape Crisis Help.
