The Court of Appeal has allowed Stephen Beatty’s historical sexual abuse claim against his late father to proceed to trial, overturning a High Court order which had dismissed the case because of delay and the loss of important witnesses.
Mr Beatty alleges that his father, Walter Beatty, sexually assaulted him once in May 1981, when he was 15, in a bedroom he shared with his brother John. The allegation was denied by Walter Beatty before a serious stroke in December 2019 left him unable to participate further in legal proceedings. He died in September 2024, after the appeal was heard.
Mr Beatty reported the allegation to Gardaí in 2017. A prosecution commenced in 2019 but ended in July 2020 after the stroke and the death of John Beatty. Civil proceedings were issued in September 2022.
The High Court dismissed the claim, finding that the defendant’s incapacity and the deaths of John Beatty and the plaintiff’s mother created an irretrievable risk of an unfair trial.
Mr Justice Noonan, delivering the Court of Appeal judgment, disagreed. He held first that the Primor test for inordinate and inexcusable prosecutorial delay did not apply because there had been no material delay after the proceedings began. The case instead fell under the separate O’Domhnaill jurisdiction, which permits dismissal where the passage of time has made a fair trial impossible.
Crucially, the court held that blame for delay can matter. At this preliminary stage, Mr Beatty’s psychiatric evidence had to be taken at its height: that PTSD caused by the alleged abuse prevented him from pursuing the matter until 2017. If correct, the defendant could not rely on that period of delay to obtain dismissal.
The court also found that substantial evidence remained available to challenge Mr Beatty’s account. The case had not passed beyond the reach of fair litigation.
The dismissal order was set aside and the case was returned to the High Court for expedited case management and trial.