Man kept alleged abuse secret for years

A man who says he was sexually abused by a priest who was working as a music teacher while at secondary school in the 1980s told a court he didn’t tell anyone about the abuse until 2009 because he didn’t know how it would be received.

The man who says he was abused several times by Henry Moloney, aged 77, during a single school year in the 1980s, was advised by his counsellor to go to the gardaí after he disclosed details to her, he said yesterday at Clonmel Circuit Court.

Henry Moloney, with an address at Kimmage Manor in Dublin, has pleaded not guilty to eight charges of indecent assault offences .

While being cross-examined yesterday by Patrick Gageby, defending, the complainant was asked if he initiated civil legal proceedings 15 months before he spoke to gardaí about his allegations.

The complainant said he went to a solicitor and asked him to contact gardaí for him. “We had to wait a while to hear anything from the gardaí,” he said.

He agreed that the first time child sexual abuse was mentioned was in 2009 during a meeting with his counsellor. He hadn’t told his wife by then. “I didn’t know how to tell anyone because I didn’t know how it would be received,” he told the court.

Mr Gageby put it to him that, in his civil pleadings, the complainant said that Henry Moloney exposed himself to him and forced him to “perform lewd acts”. The complainant said this never happened and he didn’t say it did. “Maybe my doctor picked up something wrong and it went from there, I don’t know.” “I didn’t perform any acts on him. He performed them on me.”

Mr Gageby put it to the alleged injured party that there was no abuse by Henry Moloney, and that the only time the complainant was in the accused’s room at school was when he was “vexed” that his parents hadn’t come to collect him one day and he lay on the bed while the accused worked at his desk.

“That is absolutely absurd,” the complainant said. “It’s a lie. It’s incorrect.”