Ex-care worker jailed for abusing boy

A FORMER care worker who sexually assaulted an orphan on a regular basis in a State-run institution where he himself was physically and sexually abused as a child has been jailed for two years.

He is also to be placed on the sex offenders’ register for life and is classed as a ‘very high risk’ to children.

Patrick Murphy, of Lower Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin, has a string of previous convictions in Ireland and Britain and is already serving an eight-year sentence for assaulting a male under the age of 16 and detaining and using a child for sexual exploitation.

The 59-year-old admitted when confronted by gardaí that he abused the complainant at the age of 12 or 13 at St Michael’s Orphanage, Cappoquin, Co Waterford, in the early 1970s. Murphy had also been in care there from the age of five.

Waterford Circuit Court was told that although the orphanage had no record of him working there, Murphy was in fact in a position of authority at the orphanage and regularly abused the young boy. The complainant said he would be brought to Murphy’s room and ordered to remove his clothes from the waist down. Murphy would then inject him in the buttocks with a syringe.

On other occasions, Murphy would come into the boy’s dormitory when he was asleep and would carry out abusive acts.

When renovations were carried out and the dorms were changed to smaller rooms, Murphy would bring him to the laundry at the rear of the orphanage and would sexually abuse him there.

Sergeant Paula Sheehan said the first complaint was made in July 2000. They had attempted to find Murphy but he was in Britain at the time. They eventually tracked him down in Dublin and he admitted abusing the boy and was co-operative.

Of the victim, she said. “He suffers poor health, particularly mental health, and suffers from agoraphobia. He only disclosed the problem in 1996 and only then did he really acknowledge that the abuse had happened.”

Murphy was sentenced to six years’ jail on November 19 last year for detaining and using a child for sexual exploitation as well as possessing child pornography. He received a further two years for assault on a male under 16 at Cork Circuit Court on October 30 last. He also has convictions in Britain for indecent assault and theft.

He was due to be released from Arbour Hill Prison on May 2, 2008. But Judge Olive Buttimer ordered that he serve a further two years, that he be placed on the sex offenders’ register for life. She refused leave to appeal.