The Supreme Court has granted orders preventing the trial of a senior civil servant facing 63 charges of indecent assault against two of his sisters.
The first of the alleged offences dates back 40 years and the decision underlines changing jurisprudence in the Supreme Court towards "sex delay" cases.
The three-judge court overturned the High Court's decision dismissing the man's application for orders prohibiting his trial. It found the man had established that the degree of prejudice was such as to give rise to a real and serious risk of an unfair trial.
The man was charged with 20 counts of indecent assault against one sister, on dates between 1961 and 1965 when she was aged between three and eight years. The remaining charges relate to his other sister and cover dates between 1964 and 1974.
In his judgment, with which Mr Justice Murphy and Mr Justice Geoghegan agreed, Mr Justice Hardiman said the case had "certain unusual features". The lapse of time between the alleged offences and the reporting and prosecuting of them, though not unprecedented, was in the higher range.
He also noted allegations of sexual abuse against the man were made within the family and to some social service personnel in the mid-1980s but no criminal complaint was made then.
One sister claimed to have forgotten the assaults allegedly perpetrated on her until she remembered them in hypnosis while the allegations by the second sister appeared to have been triggered by the allegations of the first.
Another significant feature of the case was the role played by the mother, now deceased, who was alleged by the sisters to have known what was going on but to have done nothing about it and to have punished them for what they allegedly said to her. The man was alleged to be his mother's "favourite".
The mother was alleged to have refused to send one sister to a doctor because, the sister alleged, "she did not want anyone to find out about the abuse". When one sister was an adult and made an allegation to the mother, that sister was allegedly locked into a closet in a room and left there for a few hours, after which the mother allegedly threatened to commit suicide.
The mother was also alleged to have compelled the second sister to babysit for her brother in his home, where abuse allegedly took place, although that sister was reluctant to go there. The mother had died in the late 1980s. The sister who made the initial allegation had said, prior to being brought to a hypnotist by her mother, that she had "forgotten everything".
Mr Justice Hardiman said the sister had, while alleging she had recovered her memory under hypnosis, later said this memory was inaccurate regarding when the alleged abuse took place. She had believed it was when she was about 14 but later said it was when she was a small child. A psychologist believed the error was because the girl was on medication and drinking at the time.
This aspect of the evidence was significant in that this appeared to be a "recovered memory" case, which posed legal problems, he said. The hypnotist was an extremely important witness but his identity was unknown.
This was a situation fraught with risk of unfairness.
It appeared one sister became disturbed and ill around 1985, when she made allegations to family members, who then made inquiries of the other sister, who also made allegations.
Then, it appeared, the sister who made the first allegation told two relations, attended the Rape Crisis Centre with three relations and attended a meeting with a priest and confronted that priest.
It appeared the second sister told her mother and four relatives of her allegations, went to the Rape Crisis Centre, confronted her brother in a pub and threatened legal action against him but later withdrew that threat and blamed her behaviour on her medication.
The judge said none of the evidence addressed why no allegation was made to gardai in the mid-1980s when the allegations were extensively made to others. There was a suggestion there was apprehension the man might be able to interfere with a prosecution because he held a senior civil service position.
That suggestion did not seem viable, he said. He believed the failure to approach the Garda was because of divisions within the family over the action to be followed and not due to any act of the brother from 1985 onwards.
