A former employee at the Letterfrack Reformatory in Connemara, Co Galway, has been acquitted of five charges relating to the indecent assault of a teenage boy at the industrial school in the 1960s.
Dismissing the charges at a special sitting of Clifden District Court yesterday, Judge John Garavan said the 62-year-old man was entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
The case, the judge added, highlighted the very regrettable and sad period in Irish history for which society at large must bear responsibility.
The court heard that the accused, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is unmarried and is now a small farmer living in the west.
During the 1960s he worked as an assistant in the kitchen at Letterfrack. In 1966, the boy came to help in the kitchen and also to assist with the school's chicken farm.
Evidence was heard that the accused man got the boy to help him tidy a store room.
The complainant, who is now in his early 50s, made a complaint to gardaí that the man indecently assaulted him in the storeroom on dates unknown between January 1st, 1966, and March 31st, 1966.
Judge Garavan noted that the complainant had made his statement outlining the alleged offences in a Garda station in Dublin in 1996, but the summons had not been issued until 2002.
Supt Tony Dowd explained that these allegations formed part of a very large investigation focusing on Letterfrack.
The DPP, he explained, had taken a considerable amount of time to decide on the matter of proceedings with some cases while not proceeding with others.
Judge Garavan said he had to look at the strength of the prosecution case as if he was a juror and ask if it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
"I have to answer in the negative. There has to be a doubt and the defendant must get the benefit of it," he said.