TD to meet paedophile's victim after outcry over release question

A Fine Gael TD is to meet the victim of a jailed paedophile, it emerged today.

Last month Clare TD Pat Breen asked the Justice Minister when bachelor farmer Joseph Nugent, 74 would be freed from a six-year jail term.

Nugent was jailed for six years in 2002 for 23 charges of sexual abuse on two boys near his home in Cree, Co Clare.

Mr Breen said he acted in his role as a local TD for a relative of Nugent and insisted he never made direct representations for his early release.

The TD today agreed to meet the victim in person next week he made after an appeal on RTÉ Radio.

The man revealed that the abuse began when he was on his way to school as a six-year-old and occurred up to three times a week until he was 13.

He said Mr Breen should have sought the information from local gardaí or the Prison Service.

“I don’t think the question should have been asked in the Dáil in the first place,” he said.

“I’m not educated in no way but I thought the Dáil was for the running of the country and more important stuff than getting a paedophile out of jail.

“He should talk to ourselves. I’m not looking for a public apology. I just want to hear from the man. There’s no point telling the papers and telling the news. We just want to hear from the man himself.”

A spokesperson for Mr Breen’s Dáil office said today that the TD would meet the victim next week.

Earlier the victim said that Nugent had threatened to kill him if he told anybody about the abuse. He abused him up to three times a week between the ages of six and 11.

“He told me that if I ever opened my mouth about it, he’d kill me. That’s all the man ever said to me. He made that threat when he abused me the first day, and he kept that threat up.”

Describing his abuser, he added: “He was the pillar of society. He was the man with the coat, and the wig and the big Mondeo new car. He was well respected in the area.

“I was fella who had nothing – a wife and three kids and nothing much to live on – bringing down a man of his status.”

Detailing the first occasion of abuse, he added: “When I was six years of age, on the way to school, he asked me one day to give me a hand with a gate inside a field. That was when he knocked me on the grass and pinned me down. That’s when the first assault happened.

“When I got to 11 I was well able for him and told him to feck off. I told my parents but they wouldn’t believe it.

“He used to come up to the house with sweets and the mother would say ’isn’t he great bringing all that stuff’ but she never knew really. When I told her she didn’t believe me.”

He eventually told a psychiatrist that he was abused and the gardai were contacted.

Mr Breen was criticised by two of his Fine Gael General Election running mates - Cllr Madeleine Taylor-Quinn and Cllr Joe Carey – over asking the Dáil question.