The Court of Appeal has dismissed Patrick Harte’s appeal against his convictions on eleven counts of indecent assault involving seven complainants. The appeal concerned conviction only; the court said Harte’s separate appeal against sentence had been deferred pending its judgment.
Harte, described in the judgment as a retired 79-year-old primary school teacher, was tried in the Dublin Circuit Court. The jury returned majority verdicts of 10 to two on 16 March 2020. On 10 July that year, he received an effective three-year prison sentence: two years on the first count, one consecutive year on the second, and one year on each remaining count to run concurrently.
The appeal challenged the decision to try the counts together, the refusal to halt the trial because of delay, and the refusal to discharge the jury after prosecution questioning about Harte’s decision not to take up a teacher-training place in 1960. A fourth ground concerned Covid-19 advice and school closures during the trial. It was not argued orally, and the Court of Appeal rejected it, finding no reason to conclude that the timing made the trial unfair or the verdicts unsafe.
On severance, the appeal court said the trial judge’s exchange with prosecution counsel did not amount to a finding that the complainants had not colluded. The court considered the case for a joint trial strong: the complainants had attended the same school, and the alleged incidents were in two classes and had striking similarities. It also noted that the Garda investigation began after complainant A contacted Gardaí, who used school roll books to identify former pupils; some made allegations when contacted. The court dismissed the challenge to the joint trial.
The court also rejected the argument that the passage of about 50 years required the trial to be stopped. It said many former pupils could potentially have been approached by the defence as witnesses, and that the unavailable school staff and inspectors appeared of little significance to the fairness question in this case. It upheld the trial judge’s decision to let the jury consider the evidence.
The court agreed that the questions about Harte’s reluctance to seek a parish priest’s reference were irrelevant, but found they could not have prejudiced him. It upheld the refusal to discharge the jury and dismissed that appeal ground. With no ground upheld, the conviction appeal was dismissed. The judgment did not decide the separate sentence appeal.