The High Court has restrained the Director of Public Prosecutions from prosecuting one indecent-assault charge concerning Stephen D., while refusing to stop 48 charges concerning two other complainants.
In a judgment delivered on 4 April 2006, Mr Justice Quirke held that the delay by Stephen D. in reporting the alleged offence was unexplained and unreasonable. Stephen D. reported it to gardaí on 6 February 1999, nine years after turning 19. The court said the applicant was therefore entitled to an injunction preventing prosecution of that charge.
The applicant had sought judicial review to prohibit prosecution on all 49 charges, arguing that delay had compromised his constitutional right to a trial with reasonable expedition. He denied the offences. No evidence was presented in the proceedings identifying specific actual prejudice to his ability to defend himself.
The other charges comprised 25 allegations concerning A.R. and 23 concerning S.D. They related to alleged indecent assaults in the 1970s and 1980s. The judgment records that both women first complained to authorities in 1998, many years after the alleged offences.
The court found, on the balance of probabilities and applying the test for pre-complaint delay, that the applicant’s dominion over A.R. and S.D. had contributed to their delay in reporting. It accepted clinical psychologist Paul Gilligan’s evidence that psychological difficulties primarily caused by the alleged abuse made A.R. unable to report until 1998, and contributed to S.D.’s reluctance to report. The court concluded that the reporting delays were referable to the applicant’s conduct and did not justify prohibiting those prosecutions.
The judge also considered delays in the investigation and prosecution. He found the investigation had proceeded efficiently from May to October 1998 and with reasonable diligence during several later periods, but found unsatisfactory explanations for inactive periods of about 10 months, six months and five months. The authorities cited the investigating officer’s work on unrelated investigations for the first two periods; no satisfactory explanation was given for the five-month delay before the applicant’s arrest in England.
Despite those shortcomings, the court found that the delays were not of the blameworthy character required to restrain prosecution. It refused the requested relief concerning the A.R. and S.D. charges. The judgment records that the applicant was returned for trial on all 49 charges in May 2002; the order in this judicial review proceeding restrained prosecution only of the charge concerning Stephen D.