‘Selfish and scheming’ judge who sexually abused six young men is jailed

Gerard O’Brien (59) sexually abused the victims at various locations in Dublin in the 1990s and also attempted to anally rape one of them.

Today, Judge Alexander Owens at the Central Criminal Court sentenced him to five years and nine months in prison, suspended for 21 months.

Judge Owens said the defendant enjoyed the “full trust” of his victims and blatantly abused that trust to “manipulate” them into sexual acts.

O’Brien sat in the dock and did not react to the verdict.

The defendant, of Old School House, Slievenamon Road, Thurles, Co Tipperary, was found guilty by a jury last December of one count of attempted anal rape and eight counts of sexual assault.

He had denied all allegations.

The four-week trial found that the abuse took place between March 1991 and November 1997, when O’Brien was in his late 20s or early 30s and working as a teacher at CBC Monkstown in south Dublin.

The victims – four of whom were his students or former students – were between the ages of 17 and 24 at the time. O’Brien, who was appointed district court judge in 2015, resigned from his position after his conviction.

The court had previously heard that O’Brien was a “thalidomide baby” who was missing both hands and a foot at birth and who asked students at the secondary school where he taught to help him use the toilet.

Many stayed overnight in O’Brien’s houses to help him get dressed in the morning.

Five of the victims said they fell asleep next to him and woke up to find him performing sexual acts on them to which they had not consented.

Four said O’Brien performed oral sex on them and the fifth said he woke up to O’Brien licking his face and pressing his penis against his buttocks.

One of the five also said O’Brien attempted to rape him anally. The assault on the sixth victim was an act of masturbation in a pub toilet.

O’Brien admitted to having had sexual contact with three of the plaintiffs, but claimed it was consensual. He denied any sexual activity with the others.

At a hearing before the sentencing, one of the victims said he had been deceived and manipulated by an “extremely selfish, scheming and intelligent man who knew exactly what he was doing in the back of his mind: he was pushing the boundaries and seeing what he could get away with for his sexual thrill.”

“It’s impossible to say how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t experienced his abuse of trust, his advances and his manipulative actions,” said another.

Defense attorney Michael O’Higgins said O’Brien was “gay in a largely homophobic society” at the time.

He had been an immature and lonely man and had never been able to have a normal relationship. He had “reached very high heights” but had now “fallen” and “lost everything.”