{"id":602331,"date":"2026-07-24T17:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/602331\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T17:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:13:10","slug":"former-christian-brother-likely-to-die-in-prison-after-being-jailed-for-five-years-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/602331\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Christian Brother \u2018likely to die in prison\u2019 after being jailed for five years \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former Christian Brother<\/a> already in prison for sexually abusing school pupils in Kilkenny<\/a> in the 1970s is \u201clikely to die in prison\u201d, a judge said on Friday, as he sentenced him to five years for sexual assaults on nine boys in a primary school in Portarlington in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Liam Coughlan (90), a former teacher and principal of the primary school on Patrick Street, Portarlington, Co Offaly<\/a>, was found guilty earlier this month to 31 counts of indecent assault on nine former pupils in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Coughlan created a \u201cfalse, distorted and evil reality\u201d in the school, the president of the Circuit Court<\/a>, Judge Keenan Johnson, said after noting evidence that Coughlan would bring boys to the front of his class on an almost daily basis and sexually interfere with them while continuing to address the classroom.<\/p>\n

He commended the victims who had come forward to the garda\u00ed<\/a> and said their victim impact statements were a \u201cpowerful insight\u201d into the lifelong damage done to people who suffer childhood sexual abuse.<\/p>\n

The trial heard the abuse happened mostly in the classroom but also elsewhere inside and outside the school, that the boys were mostly aged between 11 and 13 years at the time, and that many of the boys in the classes taught by Coughlan during the period concerned were subjected to abuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost a whole generation of all Catholic boys from Portarlington went through this,\u201d one of the victims said in a victim impact statement to the Circuit Criminal Court in Portlaoise<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBr Coughlan poisoned a whole town\u2019s young male population,\u201d the man said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see the evidence on nights out in the town years later with the levels of violence and aggression in pubs and on the streets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The man said he had been doing well socially, academically, and in sport up to the age of ten, but after he was abused by Coughlan he became introverted and fearful.<\/p>\n

Coughlan, he said, had taken the potential of a \u201cbeautiful, young and good kid\u201d and \u201cripped it to shreds\u201d.<\/p>\n

Evidence of the effect of Coughlan\u2019s crimes, he said, could be seen \u201cin the number of suicides by former students of Br Coughlan.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their victim impact statements, the men outlined how they had suffered insecurity, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and difficulties with personal relationships, in the decades since the abuse.<\/p>\n

One man, reading his statement from the witness box while Coughlan, who is receiving palliative care in Mountjoy Prison, listened by way of video-link, said he would never know what his life would have been like if the abuse had not occurred.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fear public embarrassment and being shamed in public,\u201d the man said. \u201cI often have the feeling that I have done something wrong when I haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coughlan had \u201cacted with impunity for so long\u201d, the man said. \u201cDid the various authorities have no inkling that this was happening?\u201d<\/p>\n

The shame associated with what had happened to him, he said, rests with Coughlan, the Christian Brothers, the Catholic Church<\/a> and the Department of Education<\/a> \u201cwhose oversight and inspection processes failed me by leaving this perpetrator in situ in charge of children for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coughlan was jailed in 2023 for indecently assaulting 24 former pupils at the CBS primary school on Stephen Street, Kilkenny<\/a>, during the 1970s, and was due to be released in February 2027. His new sentence starts from Friday. <\/p>\n

Barrister Maurice Coffey, instructed by Vallely Legal, told the judge his client now accepted the jury\u2019s verdict and, at this \u201cvery late stage in the day\u201d, wanted to apologise.<\/p>\n

During the trial, Det Elaine Conlon told the prosecuting counsel William Fennelly that, when interviewed, Coughlan denied the charges and said the complainants were \u201call liars\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said some former Portarlington pupils did not want to make statements saying they had \u201cput that behind them\u201d.<\/p>\n

In his judgment, Keenan referred to the obstructive legal strategy currently being adopted by the Christian Brothers in the civil courts in cases where victims of childhood sexual abuse are seeking damages. A number of the cases involve damages being sought arising from abuse by Coughlan.<\/p>\n

The \u201cmorally bankrupt and totally unfair\u201d approach being taken, he said, appeared to be designed the congregation\u2019s assets. However, he said, he was not taking this into consideration when sentencing Coughlan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Christian Brother already in prison for sexually abusing school pupils in Kilkenny in the 1970s is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[956,9,10,2512,23810,24443,13264,18,13,14,6,19,17,1328,11,12,15,16,5,3171,14234,7,8],"class_list":["post-602331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-catholic-church","tag-christian-brothers","tag-circuit-court","tag-department-of-education","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kilkenny","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-offaly","tag-portlaoise","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116976078428347087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}