The High Court has dismissed a judicial review application by R. D. seeking to prevent the Director of Public Prosecutions from proceeding with 60 charges arising from alleged abuse at an industrial school in the west of Ireland between 1965 and 1968.
The charges involve ten complainants and include alleged indecent assaults and buggery. R. D., a former member of a religious order who worked as a teacher at the school, denied all the allegations. The High Court was not deciding whether the charges were true; it was considering whether the prosecution should be stopped before trial because of delay, alleged prejudice to the defence, disclosure and the specificity of the charges.
R. D. argued that the passage of time had impaired his ability to defend himself. He cited deceased potential witnesses, unavailable records, changes to the school’s layout and his claimed lack of memory of the period. He also argued that the investigation and prosecution had taken too long and that he had suffered stress and anxiety.
The DPP opposed the application. The State’s evidence described a wider investigation into complaints about the school, involving six gardaí working full time for more than two years, over 150 statements and 22 Garda files. The court noted that records about pupils’ periods at the school and some Department of Education material were available, while medical records could not be obtained.
Mr Justice William M. McKechnie found that R. D. had not established a real or serious risk that he would receive an unfair trial. He considered much of the claimed prejudice vague or insufficiently specific, and noted that the applicant had not shown what steps he took to identify alternative witnesses or obtain records. The court said inconsistencies about locations and the school’s layout could be assessed by a jury, and that a trial judge could give directions or warnings if issues arose during the trial.
The judge also rejected the claim that delay justified stopping the prosecution. He found no blameworthy prosecutorial delay, considering the scale and complexity of the investigation and the need to handle complainants’ accounts carefully. Even if the right to a trial with reasonable expedition had been breached, the anxiety described did not justify giving that right priority over the public interest in a trial.
The court said the Gardaí had properly investigated the complaints, rejected the applicant’s media-publicity argument, and clarified that delay on the “prosecutorial side” had been assessed by reference to Garda activity, not DPP activity. It dismissed the judicial review case, leaving the criminal proceedings to continue.