Teacher jailed for two years for sexually assaulting pupil
A secondary school teacher who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old pupil in the science lab of the school was jailed for two years today.
John O’Mahony, 49, from Pluid West, Skibbereen, County Cork, cried as Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin sentenced him at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.
The judge rejected a defence description of the offences as being in a less serious category of sexual crimes.
"They were committed by an educated adult on a very young girl. You as a school teacher abused your pupil when she was young, impressionable and vulnerable. You knew that. I take the view that the breach of trust is huge. She still carries the mental scars," Judge Ó Donnabháin said.
The judge ordered O’Mahony’s name to be put on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely.
The victim of the four sex assaults that O’Mahony was convicted by a jury of committing described how the experience damaged her life.
"The feeling in my heart is almost like a weight on my chest. I get nightmares, flashbacks and déjà vu. I have learned some coping skills but the flashbacks and nightmares are horrific. I wake at night screaming, ‘Stop please!’" the victim said.
There is a legal prohibition against identifying her but she wanted the teacher who abused her to be named.
The judge further ordered that publicity of the case should not refer to the school where the accused taught.
O’Mahony was on suspension until today and it is expected that he will lose his teaching job.
He no longer lives with his wife and three children.
The victim of the crimes is married and she said that she could not express how lucky she felt to have a husband who was so understanding, particularly when there was times when she did not want her husband to touch her because she could not get O’Mahony out of her head.
She said that O’Mahony’s decision to contest the case made her sick to the pit of her stomach and she described it as like being abused all over again.
