A former secondary school teacher has gone on trial, charged with sexually assaulting a young teenage student in the mid-1980s.
Jacintha McSherry O'Connor, who is 63 and from the Mullins in Donegal town, is charged with two counts of indecently assaulting the boy between June and September 1985 when the boy was aged 13.
She has pleaded not guilty to the offences.
Prosecuting counsel Garrett McCormack said when the complainant was in first year, Ms McSherry O’Connor was a student teacher at his school in Dublin.
After the boy had finished first year, the court heard Ms McSherry O’Connor and her friend spent time with the boy and his family on holiday abroad.
Mr McCormack said there was sexual contact between Ms McSherry O’Connor and the boy in the swimming pool and on a balcony.
He said this was a teacher in her 20s and a first year secondary school student. Consent was not an issue in the case, he said, because the complainant was a child at the time.
Mr McCormack said when they got back to Dublin it was alleged there were two further incidents where the teacher performed oral sex on the boy in his home on two occasions in 1985.
These are the charges the jury will have to decide on.
In his evidence, the man said he got on well in Ms McSherry O'Connor’s class. She recommended books for him to read and he remembered going to her house reasonably regularly, where he would watch Eastenders and have food with her family.
She also gave him grinds in his home. She remarked on a photograph of the boy making his confirmation and said he looked much older than in the photographs.
He said the conversations started getting more personal. She would give him "inside information" about the people in the school. Then, he said, the conversations got a little bit stranger. She would talk about what she got up to sexually, he said.
She also recommended music to him. At the time, he said he was kind of "infatuated" with her. He listened to a Lloyd Cole album she had recommended, over and over again as it reminded him of her. She told him a Bryan Ferry album made her "horny".
The man said he was still 12 years old at this point. Asked how this all made him feel, he said he thought it was great. "I thought I was almost in love or something," he said.
Teacher helped with exam papers
At the end of first year, he said Ms McSherry O’Connor gave him some exam papers in advance to help him get into a "good class" as classes were streamed after first year.
The man said the first sexual encounter between them happened in a swimming pool while on the holiday and he said it was "burnt into" his mind.
There was another incident on the balcony of her apartment, where she gave him oral sex. He said Ms McSherry O’Connor asked him to have a drink and he said it was the first time he got noticeably drunk.
He told the court he remembered coming downstairs and meeting other young people his age and being drunk, which was an unusual state for someone his age.
The man gave evidence of two incidents where he had sexual encounters with Ms McSherry O’Connor in his own home. He said while he was on holiday he enjoyed it, and thought he was the "big man".
But he said he started to feel guilty and to feel that it was not right. He said he felt he should be out playing with his friends and did not want to be hanging out with her anymore. But he said he remembered thinking it did not feel right.
He said at the time he did not tell anyone. He bottled it up. But he said it started eating away at him. He told a girlfriend when he was 19, but only went to gardaí in recent years. He said he did not want to bring it all back up.
He said it started to get to him when his children reached the age he had been and he saw how innocent they were.
He also saw people coming forward in other unrelated high-profile case and when he saw Ms McSherry O’Connor was involved in a language school in Donegal and still had access to teenagers he thought that seemed wrong.
"That really spurred me on to go to the guards," he said.
Defence counsel Patrick McGrath put it to him that Ms McSherry O’Connor denied the allegations.
Mr McGrath said the boy had developed a crush on the teacher had become "quite obsessed" with her and asked her questions about her private life.
He said Ms McSherry O’Connor denied discussing anything of a sexual nature with the boy or that she gave him exam papers in advance.
Mr McGrath suggested that some of what the man had told the court was "a fiction".
