The High Court has prohibited the prosecution of an anonymised applicant charged with four alleged indecent assaults, finding that prosecuting authorities left a complaint dormant for almost 16 years without explanation.
In a judgment delivered on 18 January 2005, Mr Justice Quirke ruled that the unexplained inaction between a complaint made on the child’s behalf in June 1984 and a formal statement in April 2000 violated the applicant’s right to a trial with reasonable expedition. The applicant had been returned for trial to the Dublin Circuit Court in July 2002.
The charges concerned alleged assaults on W.D. at a house in Clontarf on four unknown dates between January and June 1984. W.D. was nine at the time. The court found, on the balance of probabilities, that his complaint had been reported to then Garda Sergeant Pat Cregg on 14 June 1984 and that Cregg took a statement from W.D.’s mother shortly afterwards. W.D. and his sister were also examined at Temple Street Hospital.
W.D. repeated his complaint to foster parents in 1986 or 1987, leading to a further examination at the Rotunda Hospital. The court said there was no “pre-complaint” delay requiring explanation: the child had complained soon after the alleged offences, and responsibility for pursuing the matter rested with the State authorities.
The applicant argued that the long delay and the loss or unavailability of witnesses made a fair trial impossible. The judge found that the claimed specific prejudice from unavailable witnesses was general and speculative, and insufficient on its own to justify prohibiting the trial. He also found that the investigation and prosecution from W.D.’s formal 2000 statement through the 2002 return for trial had been conducted as efficiently and promptly as reasonably possible.
But the court found no evidence explaining why nothing was done between the 1984 report and the 2000 statement. It rejected as factually inaccurate a prosecution letter stating that Cregg had taken no statements around June 1984, while allowing that his stated lack of recollection might be accurate. The judgment concluded that the almost 16 years of inaction was inordinate and excessive and created presumptive prejudice, regardless of the absence of a statutory limitation period for the offences.
The court granted the relief sought on the basis of the clear, unexplained violation of the right to an expeditious trial. It did not rely on a finding of specific prejudice as the basis for that order.