The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the trial of a man on 80 charges of indecent assault and buggery of a young boy who worked for him during school holidays.
However, while dismissing the man's appeal yesterday against a High Court decision refusing to stop his trial on those 80 charges relating to boy A, the three-judge Supreme Court also rejected an appeal by the DPP against a High Court order restraining his trial on four counts of alleged indecent assault against the boy's brother, boy B, and a further two counts of indecent assault against another boy, boy C.
The case arose after the man was charged with offences of indecent assault and buggery against the three schoolboys from 1976 to 1980. The man, a friend of the father of the two brothers, had employed the brothers and another boy to work for him during the summers.
In the High Court, Mr Justice Thomas Smyth rejected the man's claims that the delay in making the complaints combined with his memory difficulties, resulting from alleged brain damage sustained as a result of a road accident, had exposed him to a real risk of an unfair trial in relation to A.
He prohibited the man's trial relating to B and C after finding that the only evidence of credibility and consistency of complaints which the man would have to deal with related to A.
Giving the Supreme Court's judgment yesterday, Ms Justice Susan Denham reiterated that, in light of a series of court decisions, the courts no longer had to examine the reasons for delays in making complaints by persons alleging they were abused as children.
Because of a decade of experience in dealing with such cases, there is now judicial knowledge of the reasons why children might not make official complaints until many years after such abuse, she said.
Consequently, the test for the courts now in considering whether a trial should proceed was whether such delay had so prejudiced an accused as to give rise to a real risk of an unfair trial.
In this case, the man was alleging that brain damage which he allegedly sustained as a result of a road accident had prejudiced his capacity to defend himself to such an extent he could not get a fair trial.
Ms Justice Denham said the issue of incapacity or disability was not a ground upon which the court could intervene to injunct the man's trial.
If there were issues relating to the man's capacity, separate specific procedures dealt with that and it was for the trial court to decide if the man was fit to stand trial.
In that regard, the High Court had erred in considering and determining the issue of the man's capacity. She also held there was no issue of prosecutorial delay in the case.
