A FORMER director of vocations for the Holy Ghost Fathers, who was jailed for 7 1/2 years for sexually abusing two young boys, is to serve 18 months in prison following a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday.
The court said it was suspending the balance of the sentence imposed on Father Gus Griffin on condition that he went to Mellifont Abbey and observed conditions imposed by the Abbot there.
Griffin, who had edited RTE's Outlook programme, was sentenced by the Dublin Circuit Court in July last year.
He pleaded guilty to four sample charges relating to offences from 1976 to 1983.
One of the victims was abused by Griffin in the order's headquarters at Kimmage Manor, Dublin after the boy expressed an interest in joining the order.
The Circuit Court imposed a four-year sentence on a charge of indecently assaulting a then 10year-old victim in 1976; four years for indecently assaulting a teenage boy in 1981, one year for committing an act of gross indecency with the youth in 1982, and 7 1/2 years for buggery of the same victim in 1983.
All the sentences were to run concurrently.
Delivering judgment on Griffin's appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday, Mr Justice O'Flaherty said it had been argued by Mr Michael McMahon SC, for Griffin, that the 7 1/2-year term amounted to a life sentence.
There was no doubt the offences were very serious and had very serious consequences for the victims, the judge said.
Nothing emerging from the court should be taken as minimising the desperate distress this had caused to so many people.
Sentencing was not an exact science; each case had to be taken on its own.
"We have this individual and his victims to consider. There has to be punishment for such crimes but we must also consider that no man must be given up as beyond redemption," the judge said.
The monks at Mellifont Abbey had agreed Griffin could stay with them and he had already spent some time with them.
The Abbot had laid down certain rules and Griffin had obeyed them.
The court proposed to reaffirm all the sentences and order that Griffin serve 18 months in prison. The balance would be suspended on condition that he spend his time with the monks at Mellifont and observe the conditions set out in a letter from the Abbot.
Those conditions included that Griffin would have no unsupervised access to persons under 18 years and must not leave the monastic enclosure or meet visitors without the Abbot's permission.
If Griffin required hospital attention, it should be granted.
The 18-month prison term had to be judged in the context of Griffin's age, the judge said.
It would mean he would be almost 80 by the time the sentence was served.
The court wished to emphasise that while it was directing the sentence that should be served, this did not in any way involve a direction as to how the Minister for Justice should exercise his separate administrative decision if he wished to decree a different form of regime or show any form of clemency.
Sometimes it was thought by a prison governor or Minister that because a court said a sentence had to be served, this impinged on the Minister's discretion. It did not in this case.