Sex abuse accused ‘used as a scapegoat’

The lawyer for a former Christian Brother on trial for indecently assaulting four schoolboys claimed the accused was being used as a scapegoat for the complainants’ problems.

The senior counsel dismissed as absurd the allegations against the former Brother, and said the description of the accused arriving on a basketball court when a boy was playing alone was like something out of Star Trek.

Blaise O’Carroll, defending, repeatedly described as absurd the allegations made against Edward Bryan, aged 59, of Martinvilla, Athboy Rd, Trim, Co Meath.

Mr O’Carroll was addressing the jury at the close of the case yesterday at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin will complete his legal charge of the jury today, after which they will retire to consider their verdicts. Today is the sixth day of the trial.

Mr Bryan, who retired from the Christian Brothers almost 20 years ago, denied the charges of indecently assaulting two boys, each on one occasion, indecently assaulting another boy three times, and another boy on five occasions.

All of the alleged offences occurred at various locations in the North Monastery secondary school in Cork in the 1980s.

Mr O’Carroll challenged the account given by one of the complainants, who testified that he was shooting baskets in the gym when the defendant arrived.

Counsel said: “He is shooting baskets and out of the blue, Brother Bryan materialises almost like a scene out of Star Trek — beam me up, Scotty.

“Is there an innocence on the part of the prosecution or is there something going on behind the scenes — let’s get in there and make an allegation as well. He said he gets him down on the mat and ejaculates over him. You would not even find it in the script of a movie, it is that absurd.”

Mr O’Carroll said one of the four complainants had been convicted for sexual abuse of his own nieces by ejaculating on them, and counsel said the allegations the complainant made in this case were similar to what he himself had been convicted of doing, and that the jury should reflect on this.

Mr O’Carroll suggested it was a case of the complainant finding someone to blame in an effort to extricate himself from his own difficulties.

Referring to another witness’s allegation of being repeatedly abused by Mr Bryan, Mr O’Carroll suggested: “Do you not think there should be some effort to distance himself from Brother Bryan, but no, he was going back regular as clockwork to be abused.”

Mr O’Carroll then referred to one complainant’s serious cocaine problem. “As he emerges out of cocaine addiction, someone has got to be to blame for this, someone has got to be made a scapegoat. Brother Bryan has got to be made a scapegoat.”

The jury were told by the judge yesterday at the commencement of his charge that they would have to deliberate and return a verdict on each of the 10 counts, as if they were ten separate cases.

The jury consists of seven women and four men. One of the jurors was excluded halfway through the trial.