The Supreme Court has halted the prosecution of a man facing 63 historical indecent assault charges involving two of his sisters after finding a real and serious risk of an unfair trial.
N.C. had denied all allegations. Twenty counts concerned his sister K. and alleged assaults at the family home in a Dublin suburb between 1961 and 1965. A further 43 counts concerned another sister, M., and alleged assaults at an unidentified location in Dublin between 1964 and 1974.
By the projected trial date, roughly 41 years would have passed since the earliest alleged offence and about 27 years since the latest.
A central issue was K.’s evidence that she had forgotten the alleged abuse and later remembered it during a session with a hypnotist. The hypnotist could no longer be identified or traced. The court noted that the recovered memory initially placed the alleged abuse at a much later period than the dates subsequently charged.
Mr Justice Hardiman held that the absence of the hypnotist deprived the defence of any effective means of investigating how the memories had emerged, particularly where their timing had changed significantly.
The death of the siblings’ mother in 1989 was also critical. According to the prosecution material, she had been closely involved in events surrounding both complainants and would have denied that the abuse occurred. Her evidence could have addressed family living arrangements, alleged early disclosures, the hypnosis episode and claims that another person had sexually assaulted M.
The court also examined why no Garda complaint followed when allegations were widely discussed within the family and with agencies during the mid-1980s. It found that the prosecution had not established that N.C.’s conduct caused the delay from that point onwards.
The Supreme Court therefore allowed N.C.’s appeal, set aside the High Court order and granted the prohibition sought, preventing the prosecution from continuing.