Former teacher told he ‘might die in prison’ at sentencing for child sex abuse

A former schoolteacher who sexually abused 19 young boys in Donegal over a 25-year period has been jailed for 6½ years.

Patrick Sharkey, now 83, stood emotionless in the dock as he was put behind bars for a total of 132 charges.

Some victims waved at their attacker as he was led away by prison officers.

Sharkey, originally from the Clonmany area in Donegal and most recently with an address in Belfast , abused his victims in Co Donegal over a period from 1970 to 1995 – during which time he was a teacher at St Joseph’s High School in Coleraine.

Many of the victims were students at the school when Sharkey preyed on them, with one victim just seven years of age when the abuse began.

In sentencing Sharkey at Donegal Circuit Court on Thursday, Judge John Aylmer said the offending, which he described as “very invasive”, represented “a gross breach of trust on all occasions”.

He said that a further aggravating feature was the length, extended period of time and age of his victims, who were between seven and 16 years old.

“The offences can only be described as very calculated, premeditated and predatory in nature,” Aylmer said. “It involved a significant amount of grooming of the victims.”

Sharkey was before the court on signed guilty pleas for all 132 charges, which were a mixture of indecent assault and sexual assault. One of the complainants was the subject of 59 of the charges.

Some offending occurred when children travelled from school to take part in extracurricular activities and stayed in Sharkey’s parents’ house in Clonmany, Co Donegal, while other offences took place when they were on trips to Dublin .

Aylmer said the “sheer number of complainants and large number of offences took it into the upper end for sentencing”.

The signed guilty plea offered significant mitigation, while Aylmer noted Sharkey co-operated with the investigation by travelling to this jurisdiction and making “albeit limited” admissions.

“There is a significant risk that by imposing a prison sentence that you might die in prison,” Aylmer said. He sentenced him to seven years in prison with the last six months suspended.

Det Garda Johnny Gallagher outlined the evidence in the case at a sentencing hearing in May.

One victim, who was the subject of 59 counts, told detectives: “Pretty much every night I was in Clonmany with Patrick Sharkey he sexually abused me”. He said he was “so shocked” and said he “didn’t know what to do”.

“Patrick Sharkey took something out of me that never returned,” a further victim had said.

Another of Sharkey’s victims said he has been trying to block out the incidents for 40 years, while another of his victims told gardaí: “I was just terrified and I pretended to be asleep.”

Sharkey was interviewed on three occasions by detectives and made only “partial admissions”, the court heard. The court heard that Sharkey later told investigators: “Some time in the last six months I’ve come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t have touched those people at all.”