Former priest and Irish Times columnist has abuse conviction quashed

The Court of Appeal has set aside the conviction of Barry Fergal Jennings, a 57-year-old former priest and columnist who had been serving a four-year prison sentence for sexual assault. Jennings, from Cloonkeerin in Frenchpark, County Roscommon, had been found guilty by jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in March 2022 of six counts of sexual assault perpetrated against a schoolboy at various locations in Dublin over a fifteen-month period between late 1998 and the end of 1999. At the time of the offences, Jennings held the position of chaplain at a Dublin community school. Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, sitting in the Court of Appeal, identified a critical flaw in the original trial proceedings. The trial judge had failed to give the jury proper and adequate guidance on how to evaluate evidence relating to complaints made by the victim. Specifically, the jury should have been instructed that such evidence could only be used to demonstrate consistency in the complainant's account and could not serve to corroborate the underlying allegations. Without this essential direction, there existed a substantial risk that jurors had treated the complaint evidence as independent proof of the facts alleged, thereby undermining the safety of the verdict. Ms Justice Kennedy concluded that this significant omission created a real apprehension of injustice and warranted the quashing of the conviction. The case highlighted the importance of precise judicial instruction on the proper use of complaint evidence in sexual assault trials, particularly where a jury must distinguish between evidence that merely supports consistency and evidence that independently corroborates substantive allegations. The judgment reinforces established principles governing the admissibility and application of such evidence in criminal proceedings.