The High Court has refused an application to prohibit the prosecution of a redacted applicant facing four charges of alleged gross indecency against a complainant identified as P.A. The alleged offences were said to have occurred at the applicant’s Dublin home between August and November 1993, when the complainant was 15.
The applicant sought an injunction stopping the prosecution, arguing that nearly nine years passed before the complainant made a formal complaint and that the applicant was not charged until November 2004. He said the combined delays created a real risk of an unfair trial and impaired his ability to answer allegations for which no specific dates were given. The prosecution was pending before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court under indictment record number 301/05.
The complainant made a formal complaint on 1 May 2002, after Gardaí attended an incident at the applicant’s home in April 2002. The applicant was charged on 17 November 2004 and returned for trial in March 2005. In judicial review proceedings, the applicant also challenged delays in the Garda investigation and in the time taken for the Director of Public Prosecutions’ directions.
A clinical psychologist, Michael Dempsey, gave evidence for the respondent. He considered that the alleged abuse, shame, fear of not being believed and psychological effects had contributed to the complainant’s delay in reporting. The judge accepted his evidence that psychological dominance had been a factor, alongside the complainant’s shame, anger and post-traumatic stress symptoms. The judge stressed that this assessment addressed the reasons for delay; the truth of the allegations remained for trial.
The judge described the reporting delay as excessive and requiring explanation, but concluded that the reasons for it were referable to the alleged abuse and the applicant’s actions. She therefore rejected the argument that the delay justified prohibiting the trial.
On the time between complaint and charge, the court identified some delay it considered open to criticism, including the period between the investigation file going to the DPP in March 2003 and directions arriving in September. But it concluded that the overall prosecutorial delay was not significant. The court accepted evidence that Gardaí had difficulty locating the applicant for a period and had made repeated efforts to find him.
The judge added that, even if the prosecutorial delay were blameworthy and significant, the applicant had not shown that it sufficiently interfered with his speedy-trial interests. The evidence before the court did not establish a significant increase in anxiety or impairment of the defence attributable to that delay. The requested relief was refused; the judgment did not determine the criminal charges, which remained for trial.