The High Court has dismissed all proceedings brought by Anthony McDonagh over alleged physical and sexual abuse at a Galway school, finding that the age of the claims and the death of the alleged primary abuser created a substantial risk of an unfair trial or unjust result.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Twomey on 25 July 2016, concerned allegations relating to the Holy Family School at Renmore, where Mr McDonagh was a pupil between 1974 and 1980. He alleged that a staff member he knew as “Brother Jim” sexually and physically abused him, and that the school principal, identified as Mr Carey, later physically abused him after he complained.
The Brothers of Charity, sued through a nominee, denied the alleged abuse. They identified a deceased member of the order, referred to in the judgment as Brother Jim G, as the person they believed Mr McDonagh meant. Brother Jim G died on 2 September 2011. Mr McDonagh’s counsel left open the possibility that the person he called Brother Jim was someone else, but the court said no evidence had been produced of another Brother Jim at the school. For the strike-out application, it considered it reasonable to infer that Brother Jim G was the person identified by the plaintiff.
Mr McDonagh began the proceedings in June 2001. After the defence was filed in April 2004, the judgment records a lengthy period with little or no action by him before a voluntary discovery letter in September 2013. He accepted that the delay was inordinate, but argued that illiteracy, imprisonment, psychological injuries and addiction problems made it excusable. The court rejected the argument that his imprisonment was attributable to the alleged abuse and said it did not need to decide whether the delay was blameworthy: the issue was whether the passage of time posed a real or substantial risk of an unfair trial or unjust result.
The court noted both the decades between the alleged events and a possible trial, and the near seven-year period in which no step appears to have been taken to progress the case. It acknowledged that the Brothers of Charity took more than two and a half years to file their defence, but held that this did not change the outcome. It also concluded that claims concerning Mr Carey could not proceed separately: the claim about his response to the complaint was intertwined with the allegations against Brother Jim, while the physical-abuse claims did not alter the court’s assessment of the overall delay and trial risk.
The court therefore struck out all proceedings, including the claims concerning alleged sexual abuse by Brother Jim and alleged physical abuse by Mr Carey. The judgment determined the application to dismiss on delay grounds; it did not make a finding that the alleged abuse occurred.