Ex-Christian brother charged with indecent assault

A former Christian Brother has gone on trial in Cork on charges of indecently assaulting a primary school boy in the 1970s. The judge and jury were told yesterday of the complainant’s nightmares of ghosts of men in black.

Louis Morgan, 66, who is originally from Portlaoise, Co Laois, and now lives at Glenmarian Road, Portlaoise, denies four counts of indecent assault. He was put on trial before Judge David Riordan and a jury of eight men and four women on four charges of indecently assaulting a boy aged eight or nine in the mid-1970s at the Christian Brothers primary school on Blarney Street, Cork.

Detective gardaí James O’Reilly and Kevin O’Donnell met the accused in Dublin in 2012 and interviewed him about the allegations put by the complainant who is now a middle-aged man.

Louis Morgan said he became a Christian brother in 1974 and started teaching in Blarney Street that same year. He left voluntarily in 1999 and denied his decision to leave had anything to do with any apprehension of future allegations.

When specifics of the allegations were put to him he denied they ever happened and said he never sexually abused any student in his care. The complainant said he had another teacher in second-class but Brother Morgan visited the class from time to time and sexually abused him in the class. He said this also happened more frequently when Brother Morgan was his class teacher in third class.

He said the defendant would sit down on the edge of the bench, put his hand around his back and then put his hand down his pants inside his underpants and touch his hips and buttocks. He said in third class this went further and the brother would touch his penis.

“There was one incident where he put his hand between the cheeks of my buttocks, he put his finger up it. As he walked away you could see him smelling it,” he said.

The complainant told prosecution barrister, Ray Boland, of another recollection he had when Brother Morgan put his hand down his pants and squeezed his genitals so hard he cried.

Louis Morgan denied that specific allegation and all others and when the description of the alleged incident with his finger was put to him he said to gardaí: “I am disgusted by this, you can see my reaction. It never happened.”

Defence barrister, Donal O’Sullivan, cross-examined the complainant about the incidents which allegedly occurred in a classroom where there were 33 boys.

“How could a grown man sit down inside a desk of that size where two boys were sitting?” Mr O’Sullivan asked. The complainant replied that the accused would sit at the edge of the desk, sort of perched.

Mr O’Sullivan referred to doctor’s reports from recent years, disclosed to the defence, where the complainant described seeing ghosts of men in black.

The case continues today.