Paedophile Brother’s throat slit in jail attack

A FORMER Marist Brother serving eight years for the serial abuse of young boys was in hospital last night after his throat was slashed by a fellow inmate.

Christopher Cosgrove was attacked as he returned from a workshop to his cell on the A2 landing of Roscommon’s Castlerea Prison.

A makeshift knife was used in the attack. Prison sources said there was a large amount of blood covering his shirt but that he was able to walk to an ambulance.

Cosgrave was taken to Roscommon County Hospital, where his condition is reported not to be life threatening.

A Prison Service spokesman said security is likely to be reviewed in the prison.

A man alleged to have attacked him, originally from the Midlands, is serving 12 years for kidnapping and attempted murder and is described as a seriously disturbed inmate with severe learning difficulties.

Prison sources said the suspect may have been “wound up” by others to carry out the attack.

Cosgrove, 62, was sentenced earlier this year after being convicted on 180 counts of indecent assault on six schoolboys.

The victims, aged between seven and 12, were abused at St John’s National School in Sligo between 1968 and 1977.

He denied all the charges. At his sentencing hearing in March, Cosgrove was told by Judge Anthony Kennedy that, as a paedophile, he had abused his position of trust for his own deviant pleasure and sexual excitement.

The judge said the offences of the former Marist Brother, from Claremorris in Co Mayo, had been planned and protracted against defenceless victims.

Cosgrave’s trial heard that the accused had shown no remorse and continued to maintain his innocence.

Judge Kennedy told the former teacher, who left the Marist Order in 1982 and has since married, that he had shown no compassion or sympathy for the suffering and cruelty he had inflicted on the young boys.

Two other former teachers at this school have been convicted of similar offences and cases are pending against a further two.

Castlerea is the only prison in the country where sex offenders are not segregated. Those convicted of sex offences are held on the same landings as others inmates.

There are currently around 10, mostly elderly, sex offenders held in the Roscommon facility.

While the Prison Service describes it as a fully integrated facility, sex offenders tend to group together, working in the same workshops and not mixing during recreation time.

Despite the reservations of some officers about the integration policy, this attack is believed to be just the second on a sex offender since the prison opened nearly 10 years ago.