The Court of Criminal Appeal has quashed the conviction of an anonymised former teacher on 180 counts of indecent assault and directed a retrial, finding that the jury had not been adequately warned about the difficulties delay created for the defence.
The offences were alleged to have occurred between July 1968 and June 1977, when the applicant was a teacher at a primary school in Sligo. The six complainants described assaults in the classroom. The applicant denied the offences, though he acknowledged occasionally bringing boys to the front of the class and sitting them on his knee.
A jury in Sligo Circuit Court convicted the applicant on 19 January 2005. He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment on 9 March 2005. He appealed, raising several grounds, including the trial judge’s handling of the long delay. The Court of Criminal Appeal confined its judgment to that issue after concluding it was sufficient to decide the appeal.
The applicant argued that the judge had not properly explained how the passage of decades could affect the defence, including the difficulty of challenging vague recollections, locating witnesses or recalling the individual complainants. The Director of Public Prosecutions argued that evidence from several complainants corroborated aspects of their accounts and that the judge’s directions, though not ideal, were adequate.
The appeal court accepted that the trial judge had addressed the absence of complaints at the time. But it found that the judge’s broader references to the age of the case and witnesses’ memories did not adequately explain the particular disadvantage faced by the defence. The court said those difficulties were magnified in a case involving multiple complainants and one accused, especially where allegations concerned the same classroom and location within it.
The court held that the jury should have been told more fully how the age and general nature of the allegations could make it harder for the accused to remember events, find witnesses and respond to specific claims. It quashed the convictions and directed a retrial. The judgment did not determine the allegations anew or decide the other grounds of appeal.