Ex school principal Desmond Mackrell has pleaded not guilty to child abuse
A Brisbane jury has been asked to acquit a former school principal accused of sexually abusing a teenage student. SEE WHY
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A Brisbane jury has been asked to acquit a school principal accused of sexually abusing a teenage student because the complainant derived the allegations in part from nightmares, a court has heard.
Desmond Mackrell, known as Brother Bede to students, pleaded not guilty to the historical charges of repeated sexual conduct with a child, indecent treatment of a boy under 17 and three counts of carnal knowledge against the order of nature at the start of his trial in Brisbane’s District Court.
On Friday Judge Brad Farr directed the jury to enter a verdict of not guilty to the indecent treatment charge – forced oral sex in a school toilet cubicle – on the basis Mackrell had no case to answer on the count after the complainant did not recall the alleged incident during his evidence, which was given while the courtroom was closed.
In her closing address the 90-year-old’s barrister Paula Morreau, KC, questioned the reliability of the complainant whose shoulders the case rested on more than 40 years after the alleged abuse. She raised several points to argue Mackrell should be found not guilty of all remaining charges.
“The first is (the complainant) … had no memory of sexual abuse from Brother Bede my client, Mr Mackrell, before dreams and nightmares began to emerge,” she said.
“Number two, he had no memory of sexual abuse from my client at the time he first spoke to police.”
Ms Morreau argued the alleged victim’s account of what occurred had grown better over time “contrary to normal experience” in regards to a person’s memory.
She also suggested that the complainant’s memories of being abused by a different brother at school – Brother Wilfred De Cruz – who he alleged had raped him 20 times had affected his memories about her client.
“While we can never know, there is some evidence that might suggest he had a reason to make allegations against Brother Bede in circumstances where he knew that Brother De Cruz had died,” she said.
Ms Morreau said there had been deviations and contradictions in his evidence, which was unsupported and implausible.
The former student has alleged Mackrell raped him in a school toilet cubicle and his office where he was also raped by De Cruz – an offence which the defendant was charged as a party to, accused of holding the boy down at the time.
Mackrell has not been charged with rape but the offence of carnal knowledge against the order of nature which reflected the law in place at the time, the court has heard.
The complainant – who the court has heard was aged 13 to 15 at the time- has also alleged he was made to strip down in Mackrell’s office or go under a desk and fondle or fellate the defendant’s penis.
In her closing address Crown prosecutor Clare O’Connor canvassed how the allegations had arrived and the impact of trauma on that process.
“(The complainant) said that he effectively blocked these memories until around 2018 when he first revealed some details to his wife, and then things came back to him in nightmares and through flashbacks and shards of memory,” Ms O’Connor said.
“Experience has shown us that people may not remember all of the details of a sexual offence, or may not describe a sexual offence in the same way each time and trauma can affect different people in different ways, and that includes the way they recall the offence.”
Ms O’Connor also questioned the plausibility of the defence argument that the complainant had shifted memories of alleged abuse by De Cruz onto Mackrell saying for every similarity there were also differences.
“So is it a case of mixing up the memories? Is it a case of transference of dreams? Or is it the case that he was persistently abused by these two men,” she said.
“You might well think that a person is unlikely to make a mistake about whether he was raped by one person or two, especially where one of those persons is the school principal.”
Judge Farr will begin his summing up of the trial to the jury on Monday.
Originally published as Ex school principal Desmond Mackrell has pleaded not guilty to child abuse
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