Judge at Court of Appeal increases sentence for Mayo rapist

A former Seminarian who repeatedly raped his cousin when she was a child and fought the charges over two trials will now serve an additional two years in prison, after the Court of Appeal ruled that his original five-year sentence was too lenient.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy today said that the sentencing judge in the case of Aidan Gallagher (41) had erred by sentencing on the basis that all the offences were committed while the respondent was a minor, but in fact one of the offences was committed when he was 19 and so an “adult headline sentence” should have been set.

The victim, Danielle Gallagher (33) waived her right to anonymity so that her cousin Aidan Gallagher could be named in reporting the case.

Aidan Gallagher, of Dadreen, Killadoon, Westport, Co Mayo, was convicted of six charges of oral rape of his cousin on dates between 1998 and 2003 in sheds around their homes.

He had denied the allegations but was convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury sitting in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim, in May 2023. He was jailed for five years by sentencing judge Mr Justice David Keane, who also imposed a two-year post release supervision order.

Gallagher was due to be ordained a priest, but that ordination was deferred following the allegations. He has no previous convictions.

At the appeal against the undue leniency of his sentence, Roisin Lacey SC, for the State, submitted that in setting a headline sentence of six years, the judge failed to fully appreciate the gravity of the repeated offences committed by the teenager and did not afford sufficient weight to the aggravating circumstances present.

She said the headline sentence departed in a “significant way” from the norm that would reasonably be expected in a case of this nature.

Ms Lacey argued that the judge applied excessive discount to reflect the youth and immaturity of the respondent and attached too much weight to the limited mitigating factors in the case. She said the headline sentence of six years constituted an obvious error in principle.

Counsel said the sentencing judge had identified ten years as a headline sentence if Gallagher had been an adult, but this was reduced to six years because he was a minor for part of the time that the offending occurred.

She said the sentence was then reduced to five years when mitigation was taken into account. Ms Lacey said there was very little mitigation available, noting this was a case that was fought over two trials after the jury in the first trial had been discharged.

She said the offending behaviour continued until Gallagher was just under 19 and a half years of age, nearly a year and a half after he legally became an adult.

The judge did not view this as an abuse of trust situation, she said, but it was the DPP’s position that it was, in circumstances where the respondent was a cousin who lived in close proximity to the victim, and she would frequently visit his house and be sent there on errands.

She said this was very serious offending that started when the victim was eight and continued until she was 12. Counsel said the offending had a “very profound effect” on Ms Gallagher, but this was not reflected in the sentence.

Aidan Gallagher had continued to maintain his innocence through two trials and had offered “no apology” or “amends”, counsel said, adding that his youth and the fact he had no previous convictions were the main mitigating factors in the case.

Seán Guerin SC, for Gallagher, said this was a case where the sentencing judge “acted within his discretion” in setting the headline sentence and thereafter applied a “modest discount”. He said there was no error and the sentence was one which “this court has no business interfering with”.

He argued that this was not a breach of trust case as that presumes a relationship of trust, one in which an accused is trusted with the care of a child, such as a teacher, a parent or guardian, or a sports coach.

“Older cousins playing with their younger cousins does not denote that,” he said. “I don’t think there was ever a position where he was charged with minding the child.”

In delivering judgement today, Mr Justice McCarthy said that the court took the view that the complaint of undue leniency was well founded. He said that the proposed “adult headline sentence” was within the margin of discretion of the sentencing judge. However, he said the judge fell into error by setting a headline sentence on the basis that all the offences were committed while Gallagher was a minor, instead of proceeding on the basis that one of the offences had been committed when the respondent reached the age of 19.

Mr Justice McCarthy said the court would quash the sentence and move on to resentencing. He said that the headline sentence should be12 years, but he then reduced this to eight years with an additional one year’s discount for other mitigation factors.

In summary, the court imposed seven years on each of the counts, to run concurrently.

In her victim impact statement, Ms Gallagher said she started drinking alcohol as a 12-year-old and it later became a crutch. “It was all I could do to keep my thoughts getting the better of me,” she said.

She later began to abuse drugs and engage in anti-social behaviour and “frequently got into trouble”. She was prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication as a teenager.

Ms Gallagher said the abuse “defined me as a person. I was the victim, I felt I didn’t belong in this world ... I became a shell of the person I could have been.”