May 2016

Paedophile principal released after just 18 months in jail

Described by one of his 11 victims in court as “a vicious wolf lying in wait” to abuse children, the 82-year-old was initially sentenced at Ennis Circuit Court to 11 years with five of those suspended in November 2014.

However, at the Court of Criminal Appeal last May, this was reduced to a five-year term with the final three years suspended.

On his release from prison in recent days, Barry has returned to his home place at the west Clare resort of Kilkee and has already made contact with Kilrush Garda Station as part of his obligations as a registered sex offender.

Five of the 11 victims spoke out after the Court of Criminal Appeal decision hitting out at the ruling as”‘unjust and wrong”.

Barry, from Well Rd, Kilkee, abused 11 school girls at Moyasta NS over a 21-year period between 1964 and 1985 and has never shown any remorse for the assaults committed in the classroom at the two-teacher school.

The girls were aged between nine and 13 when the abuse took place at Moyasta NS with one of the victims describing Mr Barry as a vicious wolf lying in wait for her every day. She said he “terrorised and abused me daily for years”.

Barry was found guilty of 59 counts of indecent assault and four of the victims in the case were sisters that attended the school where he taught 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th class.

However, in response to the sentence being reduced, one of the women commented at the time: “I think it belittles us as victims and would almost encourage other ‘would be predators’ that it is worth the risk with a slap on the wrist like this.

She added: “We were innocent, helpless children supposed to be in a protected environment but instead were subjected to this predator every single day for years. No sentence could be long enough to get the correct justice here but to shorten it is just wrong and unjust.”

Another victim said: “I am gutted by the reduction in his sentence. I had to sit during three weeks of evidence at his trial and relive my worst nightmare of a childhood ruined by this man’s abuse.”

She said: “The scars still remain. One of the hardest things for me to understand is how his ‘significant contribution’ to his community held such sway in the court of appeal.

“In my opinion, these contributions can never outweigh the significant damage and hurt I have have been left with by Pat Barry’s abuse.

She added: “One consolation I have is that Pat Barry was found guilty by a unanimous verdict and is a registered sex offender.”

 AN 81-YEAR-OLD former primary school principal jailed for indecently assaulting 11 of his female pupils has had his six-year jail term reduced to two by the Court of Appeal.

Patrick Barry, of Well Road, Kilkee, Co Clare, had pleaded not guilty to 67 charges of indecently assaulting 11 girls on dates between 1964 and 1985 while they attended Moyasta National School as pupils.

He was found guilty by a jury of 59 counts of indecent assault and not guilty of the remaining eight counts by direction of the trial judge Gerald Keyes.

Barry was given an effective sentence of 11 years imprisonment with the final five suspended by Judge Keyes at Ennis Circuit Criminal Court on 19 November 2014.

Speaking on behalf of the Court of Appeal today, Mr Justice Garrett Sheehan said the trial judge had erred in locating the gravity of the offending at the starting point of 11 years imprisonment.

Mr Justice Sheehan said the trial judge seemed to have held that the absence of remorse was an aggravating factor and while remorse may be a mitigating factor the obverse could not be held.

The Court of Appeal considered five years as the appropriate starting point for Barry’s sentence but his advanced age and serious health problems were not such to warrant a wholly-suspended sentence.

Bearing in mind his age, health problems and the “significant contribution” he made to his community on retirement, Mr Justice Sheehan said the court would suspend the final three years of the five-year sentence.

He was required to enter into his own bond of €1,000 to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for the suspended period of the sentence.

The court heard that Barry had a release date of 20 May 2019. Following his successful sentence appeal he is likely to finish serving his new sentence next Spring.

In an unsuccessful appeal against conviction last month, Mr Justice Sheehan said the court was “unable to hold” with the former teacher on any of his 12 grounds of appeal.

Mr Justice Sheehan said Barry had been a teacher in a small, mixed, two-teacher school in rural County Clare 30 to 50 years ago.

Eleven of his female pupils claimed that when they were in fifth and sixth class they were indecently assaulted by him, the judge said.

The assaults

Mr Justice Sheehan said Barry would sit down beside the girls at their desks and touch them indecently or would call them to the front of the class and make them stand between his legs while he was pressed against them.

Sometimes, the judge said, he brought their hands up and down his legs and made some of them touch his genital area.

Apart from two particular complaints, all the offences occurred in the classroom in the presence of other pupils, Mr Justice Sheehan said.

Counsel for Barry, Roderick O’Hanlon SC, had submitted that the sentencing judge did not set out the special circumstances as to why Barry’s sentences were imposed consecutively.

Had Barry been prosecuted 30 years ago, Mr O’Hanlon said, a court would not have found it appropriate to impose consecutive sentences, Mr O’Hanlon said.

Mr O’Hanlon said Moyasta was a very small community where everybody knew each other. As such, the loss in standing for Barry would have a very significant affect on him for the balance of his life.

Furthermore, Mr O’Hanlon said Barry has a significant hearing problem. Since going to prison his hearing aid broke and it wasn’t repaired for three months or longer.

November 2014

School principal ‘robbed childhood’ of his 11 victims

A retired 80-year-old school principal stole the youth of his victims and robbed them of their childhood when sexually abusing them over a 21-year period, a judge has said.

Judge Gerald Keys made his comments at Ennis Circuit Court when sentencing Patrick Barry, Well Road, Kilkee, to 11 years in jail for the sexual assault of 11 schoolgirls at Moyasta national school between 1964 and 1985.

Judge Keys sentenced Barry to one year for each of the victims.

The girls were aged between nine and 13 when the abuse took place.

Now middle-aged women, they hugged each other and wept openly at the back of the courtroom after the sentence was imposed on their former headmaster.

The judge said he would suspend the final five years of the sentence in light of Barry’s age and health.

In court, one of the victims described Barry as a vicious wolf lying in wait for her every day who “terrorised and abused me for daily for years”.

Judge Keys, in his judgement, said Barry held a position of trust as school principal of Moyasta national school and “you abused the girls for your own sexual satisfaction over a long period of time”.

He said Barry “has shown no remorse whatsoever”. Barry had taken “the innocence of these young children in your pursuit of personal satisfaction. You have done so heedless and uncaring for the consequences for your victims.

“You undermined their trust in adults, stole their youth and trust and robbed them of their childhood.”

Barry was found guilty of 59 counts of sexual assault after a nine-day trial in Ennis in July and was on bail until yesterday’s hearing.

“Throughout the trial, you have maintained through your counsel that all the allegations of sexual assault made by each of the 11 complainants were untrue, false and untrustworthy and a distortion of the truth,” Judge Keys said.

“It was also put to each of the complainants that their memory was impaired and their evidence was unreliable, exaggerated, unrealistic and untrue. The jury rejected all of these contentions on all 59 counts.

“Despite the verdict of the jury, you have shown no remorse for your wrongdoing or apologies to any of your victims.”

Judge Keys said Barry had abused his position as principal and had “permanently scarred the lives of 11 pupils”.

“It is clear that their childhood memories have been completely overshadowed by your actions,” he said.

Another aggravating factor was that the abuse took place in the classroom at Moyasta.

Judge Keys said that the only mitigating factors he could see in Barry’s favour was that he had no previous convictions and was at a low risk of reoffending.

Outside court, one woman said: “This man showed no remorse, he never made any gesture of any sorrowfulness or any regret for what he had done and for that I could never forgive him.

“It has been an awful long journey for all of us and today is definitely justice for us. This man is a full-blown paedophile.”

July 2014

‘School principal terrorised and groped us at every opportunity’ 

OLD school friends wept and embraced in court after their 80-year-old former school principal Patrick Barry was found guilty of indecent assaults against them over a 21-year period. 

The jury, after deliberating for five hours and 35 minutes, unanimously found Barry, of Well Road, Kilkee, Co Clare, guilty on 59 counts of indecent assault against 11 primary school girls between 1964 and 1985 at the two-teacher Moyasta school in west Clare.

One victim told the trial: “He took advantage of us, he used to grope us at every opportunity. I couldn’t credit the man with anything. He terrorised all of us – I can’t remember any happy moment at the school.”

Judge Gerald Keyes, at Ennis Circuit Court, had directed the jury to find Barry not guilty on eight outstanding counts for legal reasons.

Counsel for the State, Anthony Sammon SC, said: “It is the express wish of the complainants that Mr Barry be named.”

The judge ordered that Barry be identified and placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register.

Barry taught third, fourth, fifth and sixth classes at the school. He served as school principal at Moyasta between 1964 and 1989.

One of the victims told the trial what Barry did at the country school while she was a pupil in the 1970s was “horrible”.

The woman said: “We were country children and we were subjected to this behaviour. We didn’t know what sex was, we certainly didn’t know what he was doing, other than it was horrible and we knew that it wasn’t right.”

She said: “It is still horrible, it was wrong and it is still wrong.”

She added: “We were country children in a country school abused by a man who had all of the power and who rammed his way into our families’ lives.

“He would visit our parents. As a result, there was no win, it was the word of a child against him.”

The victim told the jury that Barry “was a very violent, vicious teacher who had no respect for the children in his care”.

Another victim told the court that Barry “molested me more than times than I care to remember” at the school.

She said that Barry inappropriately touched herself “and practically every other girl in the classroom” in 1976 and 1977.

The woman – who travelled back from the US to give evidence in the case – said that the inappropriate touching occurred “practically every day” when she was aged 11 and 12 while a pupil in Barry’s fifth and sixth class.

She said: “We were all terrified going into his classroom because we had all heard bad stories from other girls.”

The witness said that Barry would sit on his high stool at the top of the class “and bring you up to the top of the class, where he would pull you in with his legs and force your hands down on his private area”.

The woman said: “He was a really terrible person to have to go to school with”.

She added: “I hated him.”

Judge Keyes remanded Barry on continuing bail to reappear before the court in October 28 to fix a date for sentence.

The victims continued to embrace each other outside the court, wiping the tears away from their eyes.