The High Court has dismissed a woman’s civil claim alleging that her grandfather sexually abused her as a child, ruling that the delay in bringing the proceedings and the death of a potentially important witness left him unable to properly meet the allegations at trial.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Charleton on 18 December 2009, concerned a motion by the defendant to dismiss the proceedings for inordinate and inexcusable delay or because a fair trial was no longer possible. The court said it had only affidavit evidence and made no decision on whether the allegations were true. The defendant denied them.
The plaintiff alleged that the abuse took place regularly between 1989 and about 1993, when she was a young child. She said she disclosed the allegations to her mother around 1993. The judgment records that the defendant disputed whether the mother called to warn him and said the plaintiff and defendant were not left alone together afterwards.
The plaintiff made a Garda complaint in 2003. The judgment said the complaint was handled properly in Mayo but was not followed up after the file was transferred to Dublin. In 2008, the Garda Ombudsman Commission found that the handling had been negligent, and the relevant Garda officer was fined €150. The plaintiff’s solicitors sent a warning letter to the defendant in April 2008, and the plenary summons was issued in September that year.
The judge found that there had been inordinate delay. He said the plaintiff had been badly let down by the Gardaí, but that the further five years between her 2003 complaint and the warning letter could not be excused. The court also said there was no conduct akin to acquiescence by the defendant and it seemed improbable that the plaintiff had been unable to approach a solicitor.
A central issue was the death in June 2008 of the defendant’s wife, who was also the plaintiff’s grandmother. The judge considered her potentially important to disputed surrounding circumstances, including whether the plaintiff and defendant had been left together without supervision after the alleged disclosure. He said the defendant was entitled to rely on her evidence.
The court concluded that, because of the delay and the grandmother’s death, the proceedings would take place without the defendant having a proper ability to meet the claim. It dismissed the proceedings on that basis. The order did not determine whether the alleged abuse occurred.