Former Synge Street school principal jailed for sexually abusing seven pupils

Big Gerry

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/former-school-principal-jailed-for-sexually-abusing-seven-pupils-1.4301456

A former school principal convicted of sexually abusing seven of his pupils has been jailed for three years.
After a trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last March, Patrick Harte (78) was convicted of 11 counts of indecently assaulting seven pupils at the Sancta Maria Christian Brothers primary school on Synge Street, Dublin between September 1968 and September 1970.
The court heard that when gardaí put the allegations to Harte in 2015, the former teacher claimed the victims had “a vendetta against him”.

This story came as a shock to me not because harte was exposed as a peadophile but because I thought he was dead.

The last time I heard about harte was back in the late 1990s when he was forced to leave his job as principal after an alleged incident took place in his office.

Anyone who went to synge street school in the 1990s would have heard the story.

I was expecting him to get sent down back in the 1990s after the incident but for whatever reason the case never made it to court.

When I attended synge street school back in the 1990s even as a kid I always suspected harte was a peadophile he fell into all the peadophile stereotypes he was far too friendly with the kids and had a big box of sweets on his desk.

I'm surprised he wasn't caught decades earlier. I don't think a character like harte would be able to operate in today's environment without setting off alarm bells.

I kind of feel sick now to know that I was even in the same room as him as a kid. Even without the peadophile stuff he was a vile and angry man and would fly off the handle for no reason.

I would like to hear from other people who went to synge street and what they thought of him.

One thing I will never forget is that he was giving out yards about a group of rowdy synge street boys who were climbing up on to a local bus shelter saying that they were giving the school a bad name. This is coming from a child rapist giving out about kids just being kids.

Also was anyone here a pupil at synge street when he got sacked ?

When I heard about the incident in his office I had left the school a few years earlier so I didn't get the full story.

I'd imagine it must have been very difficult for the school to explain to parents why the principle had to leave all of a sudden.