The High Court refused an applicant leave to seek an order prohibiting his prosecution, ruling that complaints about changed charge dates should be addressed in the trial court unless they create a risk of an inevitably unfair trial.
The judgment concerns charges against P.F. relating to alleged sexual abuse of three former residents of a children’s home run by a religious order in Dublin. The court said the applicant stated that he had worked there voluntarily from 1974, and that the alleged conduct included serious sexual offences. The allegations have not been determined at trial.
The original charge sheets covered alleged offences against three complainants, identified in the judgment as A, B and C, from dates going back to August 1968. Before the trial, the indictment changed the dates charged for A and B. A’s charges were dated to 1974–75, when she was 13 or 14; B’s to 1977, when she was 14. The dates for C were unchanged, and those charges were outside this application.
After a jury was sworn in July 2015, but before the applicant was put in charge of it, the defence asked the trial judge to exclude evidence from A and B because their statements referred to different dates. Alternatively, it sought an indictment matching those statements or an order stopping the trial as an abuse of process. The judge refused the applications, discharged the jury and set a new trial date for October 2016.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys held that the Director of Public Prosecutions was not required to charge the dates recalled by complainants if the prosecution assessed the evidence as a whole and considered other dates appropriate. A difference about dates did not make the statements inadmissible, and the court found no basis to require a substituted indictment or halt the prosecution. The judgment said uncertainty about dates could be put to the jury, and any surprise from the amended dates could be addressed by time to prepare.
The court also held that prohibition is an exceptional remedy. The primary responsibility for protecting trial fairness lies with the trial judge, and the High Court should intervene only where there is a genuine risk of an inevitably unfair trial. It said the applicant could raise his concerns through cross-examination, submissions to the jury, requests for jury directions or an application at the close of the prosecution case.
The court refused leave to seek prohibition. It did not decide whether the applicant was guilty; the judgment addressed the pre-trial challenge to the indictment and the appropriate forum for fairness arguments.