THE SUPREME Court has reserved judgment on a test action to determine if the State has vicarious liability for sexual assaults by a national school principal on an eight-year-old girl.
The State could face “extraordinary” claims if it is found vicariously liable for 20 sexual assaults by principal Leo Hickey on Louise O’Keeffe when she was a pupil at Dunderrow national school, Co Cork, in 1973, James O’Driscoll SC, for the Minister for Education and State, argued yesterday.
Potential claims could include claims by a person that they had not received a proper education because a teacher was not a good teacher, counsel said. This would be an impossible situation for the State, and Ms O’Keeffe was seeking to have “far too wide” the definition of vicarious liability.
Also for the State, Feichin McDonagh SC said Ms O’Keeffe had failed to produce evidence showing that a priest to whom a parent of another child at the Dunderrow school had complained about Hickey in 1971 was at that time manager or acting manager of the school.
The parent had complained to the local curate, Fr O Ceallaigh, that Hickey was “rotten” and made it clear she was referring to sexual matters but had not said Fr O Ceallaigh was acting manager, counsel said.
The three-day hearing of the case concluded yesterday. The Chief Justice, Mr Justice John Murray, said the court would reserve its decision.
The outcome of the appeal by Ms O’Keeffe (43), of Thoam, Dunmanway, Co Cork, against a High Court decision in 2006 that the Minister for Education and State are not vicariously liable for the 1973 assaults on her is awaited by some 200 similar cases.
After parents withdrew girl children from the school in protest later in 1973, Hickey resigned in January 1974. He was employed the following month at a boys’ school in Ballincollig, Cork, and continued to teach until his recognition as a teacher was withdrawn after criminal proceedings in the late 1990s. He was jailed for three years in 1998 after pleading guilty to 21 sample charges of indecent assaults on 21 girls.
