Court hears how sex offender ‘groomed’ youngster

Date Published: 15-Jul-2010

By Anne Healy

A former Redemptorist student priest has been sentenced to five years in prison with the final two and a half years suspended for raping a 10-years-old boy in Galway City 36 years ago.

Teacher Gerard Cleere (55), a native of Kilkenny, had to be extradited from England last November, where he had been living at a sex offender’s halfway house at 71 Regents Road, Leicester, to stand trial in Galway.

He fought his extradition and then lost his appeal against the warrant which Inspector Michael Coppinger executed on November 6, 2009 in Leicester.

Cleere denied he buggered the boy at the boy’s home in Mervue on a single unknown date between January 1, 1973 and December 30, 1974 but he did plead guilty at his two-day trial at Galway Circuit Criminal in April to indecently assaulting him.

A jury found him guilty of the more serious charge of buggery and sentencing was adjourned to last Tuesday for the preparation of a victim impact report.

Insp Coppinger told the sentencing hearing that the victim, who is now 46, had been left deeply traumatised by the assault and continues to suffer from severe and chronic symptoms associated with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He said the man’s marriage had failed, as did a subsequent relationship because of his need to wash himself carefully after lovemaking, and he had also resorted to alcohol to blot out the incident.

The Inspector said Cleere had “groomed” the boy prior to the abuse by praising him when he played sports and by befriending the boy’s parents and visiting their home. He had pretended to have an interest in the family, but once he got what he wanted by abusing the boy, he never made contact with the family again.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune