The High Court has dismissed a civil claim alleging that a father sexually abused his teenage son in 1981, ruling that the passage of time had made a fair trial impossible.
In a judgment delivered on 9 February 2024, Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan said the defendant could no longer give evidence or instruct his legal team because of severe cognitive impairment. The plaintiff’s mother and the brother who shared his bedroom at the time of the alleged incident had also died. Both had denied the allegations in statements to gardaí while alive.
The judge found that the central question—whether the alleged abuse occurred—could no longer be safely resolved. The defendant was the principal defence witness, and the two deceased witnesses were identified in the plaintiff’s complaint as having direct knowledge of events. The plaintiff was therefore left as the only available witness of core fact, the court said. Evidence from surviving relatives about later disclosures or alleged admissions could not resolve what happened during the incident itself.
The plaintiff alleged that his father, after drinking, came into the bedroom and touched him in a sexually abusive manner. He also claimed that his father later admitted the incident and apologised. The defendant denied any inappropriate behaviour in a statement to gardaí. The deceased mother and brother also denied the allegations. Those were disputed accounts, not findings that the abuse occurred or did not occur.
The plaintiff reported the allegation to gardaí in 2017. A prosecution was later discontinued after the defendant suffered a stroke in December 2019, leaving him permanently incapacitated and unable to defend himself. The civil proceedings were issued in September 2022, more than 40 years after the alleged incident.
The defendant’s representative applied to dismiss the civil case because of delay and the resulting prejudice. The plaintiff opposed the application, relying in part on medical evidence about post-traumatic stress symptoms and arguing that evidence from family members could support his account. The court first ordered disclosure of the Garda investigation file so it could assess what evidence remained available.
Justice Phelan concluded that the defendant’s unavailability, combined with the deaths of the two witnesses of primary fact, created an insurmountable difficulty for the defence. She said the action had passed “beyond the reach of fair litigation.” The judge did not need to decide whether all earlier delay was excusable, but observed that the medical evidence did not explain the delay between the 2017 Garda complaint and the 2022 civil claim.
The court ordered the proceedings dismissed. It directed that, unless the parties agreed the terms of the formal order and consequential matters, the case would be listed for a final ruling after two weeks.