Teacher charged with indecent assault

By David O’Sullivan

A former teacher at a Dublin secondary school has gone on trial charged with indecently assaulting a pupil in 1985.

Jacintha McSherry O’Connor, 63, of The Mullins, Donegal Town, Co. Donegal, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of indecently assaulting a child on dates between June 1 and September 1, 1985.

 The incidents are alleged to have happened while Ms McSherry O’Connor worked as an English teacher at a school in Dublin.

The complainant alleges the assaults took place at his home while she was providing him with English tutoring.

Garrett McCormack BL, prosecuting, said it is the State’s case that there was also sexual contact between the boy and the accused on a holiday she attended with his family.

He said the victim was “a young teenager at the time” and that “consent in this case is not really an issue because we are dealing with a child.”

The complainant, now 51, gave evidence that the accused came with his family on holiday to Spain.

He had just finished his first year of secondary school.

The accused stayed in a separate apartment, but the complainant says two incidents of a sexual nature occurred over the course of the holiday, once in a swimming pool and again at her apartment.

The first incident which happened in the swimming pool, occurred when she came up behind him and started feeling his penis before taking off her bikini and rubbing her breasts against his back he said.

He said, she then told him,  to “come up to the apartment later.”

Later that night, he went to her apartment.

He says that while at the apartment she performed oral sex on him.

The accused also asked him to have a drink and it was the first time he got noticeably drunk.

The complainant describes how he “hadn’t reached puberty” at the time of the alleged incidents.

He says he was too young at the time to be able to ejaculate.

After the incidents occurred on holiday, he thought “Wow, I’m a big man now.”

When they returned to Dublin, he says there were two specific examples of the accused indecently assaulting him.

Both of these allegations occurred at his home.

The complainant described how he was “infatuated with her” and how he thought he was “in love.”

However, he says the incidents started “eating away at me” as time went on.

The complainant says he began to think “This isn’t right”, and remembers looking out at his friends playing and wishing he could play with them rather than go to see Ms McSherry O’Connor.

At age 19, he told a then-girlfriend but did not want to go to the Gardai.

He said he wanted to “get on with things” and that it took him some time before he went to the gardai.

He says seeing his own children at the age he was at the time of the alleged incidents along with other, unrelated high-profile cases “spurred me on to go to the guards.”

When he looked Ms McSherry O’Connor up and saw she still had access to children and worked at a language school in Donegal, he thought, “That seemed wrong.”

Before the alleged assault, he said that conversations between the two “started getting a little stranger.”

He said he remembers the accused telling him a Brian Sherry album made her “horny.”

He also said she would tell him “what she would get up to sexually.”

The man says he called to her house on a number of occasions, at one point watching “Eastenders.”

 The complaint described how the accused “praised me for my creative essays” and “recommended books for me to read.”

 He says at one point the defendant produced an essay for him, and that she gave him exam papers in advance before the end-of-year exams.

Patrick McGrath SC, defence, said that his client denied the allegations.

He put to the complainant that it is “inconceivable” that the alleged events could have occurred.

He suggested that the complainant is wrong about any conversations he alleges to have happened and that Ms McSherry O’Connor never discussed anything of a sexual nature or said anything about being “horny” when specific music was played.

He says the man had developed a “crush” on the accused and became “quite obsessed.”

The trial continues before Judge Elma Sheahan and a jury today.