Ronan McCormack has sentence for indecent assault cut

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Ronan McCormack had his seven-year sentence for indecently assaulting two boys reduced to four years by the Court of Appeal on 22 January 2018. The court found that the aggregate sentence for those offences and separate offences in the 1980s was excessive and disproportionate.

McCormack had received a five-year-and-ten-month jail term in 2014 for abusing schoolboys in the 1980s. Following publicity about that case, two more victims came forward.

A jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court subsequently found him guilty of 14 counts of indecently assaulting the two boys, who were aged between seven and 13 when the offences occurred at various locations between June 1972 and March 1975. Judge Martin Nolan imposed consecutive sentences totalling seven years.

Giving judgment on the appeal, Mr Justice George Birmingham described the offences as very serious and said they had a very serious impact on the children. He said McCormack’s poor health, his likely age on release and the time since the offences had to be considered. The court held that four years was more appropriate for the offences before it.