The Garda has said that, while a full investigation into the circumstances of the alleged sexual assault on a 13-year-old boy at the King’s Hospital school in Co Dublin was under way and was likely to be lengthy, there was deep concern that the alleged attack had not been reported to them sooner.
Gardaí expressed concern the delay would have an impact on their information gathering, especially forensic evidence that might have been available in the immediate aftermath of the crime before the scene was disturbed.
Given that the victim said he was attacked by a group of other children and violated with a hockey stick, gardaí said immediately examining the room where the attack was alleged to have taken place would have been crucial. “You are looking to seal off a scene straight after something like this is reported and so everything is preserved as it was at the time of the incident,” one officer said. “Then nobody goes in until after the technical bureau do their examinations, but in this case a number of days passed.”
The same source said the night attire worn by the victim and the boys alleged to have attacked him should have been gathered up along with the bed clothes from every bed in the room. If forensics were gathered from a scene preserved at the time of the crime, technical evidence would emerge that refuted or corroborated allegations and could determine those who took part in the attack and those who took a lead role.
The victim and all of the boys present at the time would need to be interviewed by specially trained staff, said one source, although it was unclear whether that process had started. The parents of the victim and suspects, along with staff at the school, would also have to be spoken to.
Gardaí said it was too early to say how many people understood the seriousness of the allegation before news of it emerged in The Irish Times. The same sources added that while minors could be prosecuted before the courts for participation in a crime or dealt with under the youth diversion programme, it was too early to say what legal process, if any, would emerge from this investigation.
It was also too early to say whether anyone knowingly frustrated the case being reported immediately; an action, if proven, could result in criminal charges.
While there are concerns that the attack was recorded by phone and that this evidence could have been deleted, in many cases such evidence has been retrieved once physical handsets and SIM cards in use at the time of the attacks were available. It was not confirmed whether such recordings had been taken in this case.
However The Irish Times understands that as many as four boys may have filmed some of the events surrounding the alleged attack on their phones. These were confiscated by the school authorities last Tuesday.
Meanwhile Dr Ken Fennelly, secretary to the board of education at the Church of Ireland, has said they had first heard of the alleged assault earlier this week when contacted by a journalist, “although I should put that into context – the school wouldn’t be under any obligation to tell us , to tell me here”.
Speaking to RTÉ's Drivetime programme, he said: "We in the Church of Ireland board of education, we're responsible as an advisory body for primary schools, not for secondary, and their obligation would be to the statutory authorities, not to us. In fact, it would have been a breach of procedure if they had told us anyway. We had a role to make sure that nobody was in danger and that the statutory authorities had been notified."
