Former school principal jailed over indecent assaults of boy
Aidan Clohessy (85) was convicted of 19 counts of indecent assault following two separate trials at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last month.
Advertisement
Imposing sentence in the first case against him on Monday, Judge Elva Duffy said Clohessy was 'living a life full of good deeds during the day', but was also 'an ogre' who carried out 'what can only be described as atrocities at night time, when no one could see that behaviour'.
Clohessy was the principal of St Augustine's School, Blackrock, Co. Dublin from the early 1970s until 1993. The six boys were all pupils of the school. Some were boarders at the school, which catered for boys with mild to moderate learning disability at that time.
The boys were aged between 10 and 13 when Clohessy's offending took place. The abuse primarily took the form of inappropriate touching, the court heard.
In the first trial, Clohessy, with an address at the Hospitaller Order of St John of God, Granada, Stillorgan, Co Dublin, was convicted of 14 counts of indecent assault - 10 in relation to one boy and four in relation to a second boy on dates between 1983 and 1985.
Advertisement
On Monday, he was handed a global sentence of four years in relation to the offending against these two injured parties.
Judge Duffy noted Clohessy's age and health would make custody more challenging for him.
The jury in the second trial returned guilty verdicts on five counts of indecent assault – two for one boy, and one count each in relation to three other boys. All this offending took place between 1969 and 1986. Clohessy was acquitted of three further counts of indecent assault.
Having heard evidence in this case on Monday, Judge Martin Nolan adjourned the case overnight to consider sentence.
Advertisement
Victim impact statements were read to the court on behalf of all six injured parties. They outlined how the abuse affected their mental health, relationships, education and later employment opportunities.
One man said: 'Brother Aidan, I don't forgive you but I don't judge you anymore. That responsibility does not belong to me.
'One day, you will stand before the man you chose to serve. One day, you will stand before your maker, and on that day, you will be handed your judgement.'
Another said he struggled to learn his wedding vows or to read his children a story.
Advertisement
Clohessy was interviewed voluntarily by gardaí and denied wrongdoing. He acknowledged that corporal punishment was used in the school including by him. Clohessy told gardaí this included striking boys on their bare buttocks, but said this was only for the most serious offences and only of those boys who were residents at the school.
The investigating gardaí agreed with Ronan Kennedy SC, defending, that his client was co-operative during the investigation.
The garda further agreed that Clohessy has been the subject of adverse media publicity.
Mr Kennedy told the court his client will not be appealing the jury's decision in either trial.
Advertisement
Clohessy is originally from Co Limerick and entered the religious order after completing his Leaving Certificate in 1958. He initially trained as a psychiatric nurse and after some years working in this area, retrained as a teacher.
Clohessy started work at St Augustine's School in 1969, becoming principal in the mid 1970s.
Mr Kennedy said his client served in roles on the provisional leadership team and was appointed in 1993 to lead a mission in Malawi to develop mental health services there where he remained until 2013 when he returned to Ireland.
Mr Kennedy said Clohessy lives 'a humble and quiet existence' and supports other members of the religious community who have significant health issues.
A medical report and two testimonials were handed to the court on Clohessy's behalf.
Mr Kennedy asked the court to take into account his client will find custody more difficult due to his age and health issues.
He submitted that his client would have to live with the stigma of being a sex offender and has already been subject to negative publicity. 'In many respects, he was already condemned and judged in the court of public opinion before he was ever tried in this court,' Mr Kennedy said.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call the national 24-hour Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800-77 8888, access text service and webchat options at drcc.ie/services/helpline/ or visit Rape Crisis Help
.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
37 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
My aunt was raped and murdered - I tracked down her killer and seduced him on Facebook after police failed to find him
A new documentary reveals how a tenacious British woman took justice into her own hands - turning into an online Miss Marple and seducing the man she suspected of raping and murdering a beloved aunt - after police failed to find him. The extraordinary story of how Lehanne Sergison, a retired chartered surveyor who lives in Bromley, wooed her cherished family member's killer via DMs on Facebook - telling him 'you've got sexy eyes' - is the subject of Amazon Prime Video documentary The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer, released on Sunday. Lehanne, 54, shares the astonishing story of how she turned online sleuth to track down the 26-year-old gardener who'd callously attacked and murdered Christine Robinson, 59, on the 125-acre Rra-Ditau game lodge she lived on in Thamazimbi, South Africa in July 2014. Andrea Imbayarwo, then the estate's gardener, who now called himself Andrew Ndlovu, had bundled Christine's body in a duvet after raping her and slashing her throat with a knife - which was still left in her neck when her body was discovered. A retired teacher from Liverpool, Christine, 59, had run the sprawling South African estate alone after the death of her husband Daniel from cancer in 2012. After the brutal killing, Imbayarwo fled with £3,500 in cash, wages Christine had allocated for her staff at the 30-guest estate. Receiving a phone call on July 30th 2014 with the tragic news of her aunt, who she would speak to every Sunday on the phone, Lehanne tells the documentary she assumed police would catch the killer. However, it quickly became clear that he might evade capture, with police saying they were powerless to act - after CCTV footage showed him heading towards his native Zimbabwe. Andrea Imbayarwo, Christine's gardener, who also called himself Andrew Ndlovu, was prime suspect in the killing - but in spite of Lehanne's pleas, the case was dropped - and it was six years before she herself managed to solve the crime Sleuth: Lehanne made a fake Facebook account she named 'Missy Falcao' (left) to contact Andrew Ndlovu online, who also hid behind a fake account (right) Eaten away by the idea that the case would remain unsolved, Lehanne became fixated with finding Imbayarwo, spending years trying to avenge the murder that had cut short her aunt's life. 'He could feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair when she couldn't,' Lehanne told Weekend magazine in a recent interview. 'Hearing of Christine's murder was like an electric shock running through my body. We'd always been so close. It was a brutal, traumatic death for a lovely, kind, generous woman.' Despite being 6,000 miles away in London's leafy suburbs, the documentary reveals her dogged determination to catch Christine's killer led her to turn online detective. After delivering a petition to Downing Street in 2014 calling for action, Lehanne realised it was up to her to hunt him down - and she set to work hatching a plan. With her own health issues - she suffers with severe asthma, she decided travelling to her aunt's adopted country wasn't the right tack, and realised 'my only tool was the internet.' Lehanne decided it was futile leaving it to the hard-pressed authorities in South Africa, where around 11 women are killed every day. She told the Telegraph this week: 'I think life is cheap there [South Africa]. It's accepted. Even when they find the men responsible, cases fall apart because systems aren't robust enough.' In the new Amazon documentary, Lehanne reveals how she 'seduced' Christine's killer from her sofa at home in the UK, some 6,000 miles away from the tragedy in South Africa When she finally found her man on Facebook, she says: 'My stomach was in knots'. 'There he was having an active life. He was posting comments on some dating pages, which really concerned me. 'So I thought, "If he wants female companionship, let's see if he bites."' Without a thought for the potential danger, Lehanne, who's married and originally hails from Kent, set up a fake Facebook account, posing as flirtatious air hostess Missy Falcao. 'I sent him a message saying, "You've got sexy eyes." 'Then I panicked. I was going down a route, but I didn't know where. My emotions were a rollercoaster. 'When he replied, I could barely breathe. My stomach was doing somersaults. My husband was shocked that he'd replied, but we agreed the important thing was to keep him hooked in.' In the weeks that followed, a 'romantic' online relationship began to develop, which would ultimately bring her aunt's murderer to justice. 'I realised I had to make up a backstory for Missy Falcao,' says Lehanne. 'I decided she was a young, sassy air stewardess from Ghana. He was flattered; I knew flattery would keep him interested. 'As the messaging continued he wanted to meet on FaceTime, which would have blown my cover. But there was also the fear that as he wasn't getting what he wanted, he'd walk away. 'It hurt every time I contacted him. I wanted to say, "I know who you are and what you've done." But I did what I felt I had to do to get justice.' Having found out the phone number of the killer - who now claimed to be an electrician and living alone in Johannesburg - Lehanne tipped off South African detectives for them to arrange a sting operation. To her exasperation, the phone tracking failed because his phone was switched off. 'I was angry and disappointed. I contacted Andrew but there was no response,' recalls Lehanne. 'A couple of days later I got a message from him explaining that his phone had been stolen. 'It seemed very coincidental this had happened the night of the sting,' she says. 'There was an exchange of messages, then a chilling, "Are you for real, Missy?" It was the first time he'd actually questioned anything. I knew then that I'd lost hold of him.' Lehanne handed over Missy Falcao's Facebook account to the South African police but Imbayarwo either lost patience or became suspicious, and he ceased messaging Missy altogether. The trail went cold for nearly two years - until the sixth anniversary of Christine's death in 2020. 'It was about 4am and I couldn't sleep, so I checked his profile. He'd posted a picture of himself. There was a ferris wheel in the background and I realised he was still in Johannesburg,' she says. Incensed, Lehanne decided to post this message on Facebook: 'Six years ago today this man raped and murdered my aunt Christine Robinson. Andrew Ndlovu is still a free man, enjoying his life after taking hers.' More than 70,000 people shared the post, and it was picked up by Ian Cameron, an anti-crime activist in South Africa who posted it on his social media, sending it viral. Ian was approached by Imbayarwo's boss at the company where he worked installing garage doors, and within hours he was arrested. 'When it came to his arrest, I was on a video call with Ian telling me live what was happening,' says Lehanne. 'I was shaking so much I couldn't believe it. The next thing is I'm seeing him in handcuffs. I just wanted to shout from the rooftops.' Imbayarwo was finally convicted two years later and given two life sentences. 'If this long, traumatic journey's taught me anything, it's to never give up,' says Lehanne.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
'I'm really sorry. She's been having an affair': Chilling words of jealous husband who recorded himself murdering his wife
A man has been sentenced to life for the murder of his wife after gardaí found footage of the incident on a phone he set up to spy on her, a court has heard. The father-of-two, who inadvertently recorded stabbing his Ukrainian wife to death, told paramedics and gardaí at the scene she was having an affair and he 'freaked out' after seeing 'something on her phone about sex'. Stephen Mooney, 53, was yesterday sentenced at the Central Criminal Court to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for the murder of his 43-year-old wife Anna Mooney (née Shuplikova). At the hearing, Mooney took the stand to apologise to his wife's family and their children. He had pleaded guilty earlier this year to his wife's murder. This came after gardaí hacked into his phone and discovered video footage of the build-up to the killing and an audio recording of the murder itself. Outlining the evidence, Detective Sergeant Basil Grimes told prosecutor Desmond Dockery SC that Mooney called emergency services at 1.09am on June 15, 2023. He reported a person had been stabbed at his home on Kilbarrack Road, Kilbarrack, Dublin 5, and when asked who did it, he replied: 'I did.' A Dublin Fire Brigade officer was first on the scene and found Mooney kneeling over his wife's lifeless body, speaking to emergency services on the phone. She had a knife lodged in her chest. The defendant told the paramedic: 'I've killed her... She's my wife. This has been going on for years. I'm really sorry, she's been having an affair.' A garda took a note of Mooney saying: 'She's having an affair, it got out of control, I tried to save her, everyone's lives are ruined.' He added: 'It's awful, I'm sorry to put you through this. I saw something on her phone about sex and everything else and freaked out.' He later said: 'There is no suspect. I am the guilty one. There's nothing worth this.' Detective Garda Jeanette O'Neill carried out a technical exam of the home and found blood pooling on a couch and blood spatter on the wall behind it. Ms Mooney was lying on her back on the kitchen floor when paramedics arrived. Pathologist Dr Sallyanne Collis said the stab wound to Ms Mooney's chest tracked to 13.3cm and pierced the heart, diaphragm and abdominal cavity. The knife had a 16cm single-edged blade. There were stab wounds to the lower left side of her back, the left upper arm and further incised wounds to her left hand and arm. She had 'quite a considerable amount' of alcohol in her system. The pathologist concluded death was caused by multiple sharp force injuries. Det Sgt Grimes said that weeks before Mooney was to go on trial this year, gardaí accessed his phone for the first time using updated software that allows phones to be hacked, even when they are protected by a PIN code. Analysis of the phone found a 90-minute clip which included footage of the murder, he said. He added that Mooney can be seen leaving the room where the murder happens and returning with the weapon. The moment when Ms Mooney died was off-camera, but the audio records 'all events leading to her death'. Det Sgt Grimes said the video goes quiet before Mr Mooney can be seen returning to the kitchen where he drinks three glasses of water and runs water over his hands while making the 999 call. The detective said it appears Mooney had set the phone to record in an elevated position with a view of the kitchen table. Detectives believe he set it up that way to record his wife entering her PIN into her phone so he could then take it and find out who she was contacting. The recording was still running when Mooney attacked his wife. The detective confirmed that Mooney has worked as an estate agent and has no previous convictions. Under cross-examination, he agreed with defence counsel Michael Bowman SC that Ms Mooney moved to Ireland from Ukraine in 2004 and the pair married in 2005. They have two children. Det Sgt Grimes agreed the investigation had confirmed that Ms Mooney was having a relationship with a man in Germany. Following the detective's evidence, Mooney took the stand to apologise to his wife's family. 'I am truly sorry for what happened that night,' he said. 'It is the burden I go to bed with every night and wake up with every day. I loved Anna.' He finished by saying: 'I wish to apologise to my kids for the terrible suffering I have caused everybody. I hope one day everybody will be able to forgive me.' Judge Paul McDermott imposed the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. He said that he has no discretion in sentencing and that Mooney's future will be determined by a parole board.
The Sun
4 hours ago
- The Sun
I snared my aunt's killer by seducing him on Facebook when cops botched hunt… sick sex lie in court made my blood boil
SHAKING with so much rage that she struggled to breathe, Lehanne Sergison read a flirtatious Facebook message declaring her 'one in a million'. The Kent woman, 53, had received a response from the monster responsible for raping and fatally stabbing her aunt in the neck before going on the run. 11 11 Using a stranger's photo under the alias Missy Falcao, she had been trying to snare evil Andrew Ndlovu by tricking him into revealing his whereabouts so that he could be arrested by police. In 2014, the brute butchered Christine Smith, 59, who was recently bereaved, at her safari lodge in South Africa where he worked as a gardener. He then fled across the Zimbabwe border before sneaking back to Johannesburg under the radar - and cops told Lehanne: 'The chances of finding him are nil." But after spotting the killer actively looking for love on Facebook, "desperation" led her to take matters into her own hands and hatch her flirty plan, writing: 'Hello handsome u've (sic) got sexy eyes." As well as two and half years of exchanges with him, it would take three undercover police operations and a viral social media post before the ghoul was snared and handed two life sentences in 2022, eight years after the chilling attack. Despite Ndlovu's incarceration, Lehanne tells The Sun about the haunting memories that plagued her, his sickening attempt to escape justice and the botched investigation. 'It was spur of the moment and out of desperation,' Lehanne tells us. 'After seeing him advertising for women on dating sites, I feared there was going to be another victim. 'Shock, surprise, hope, a whole raft of emotions ran through my body when he first replied to me. I had to think quickly, flatter him and play to his ego. 'All of the time, I just wanted to tell him 'I know what you have done and who you are'. It was a bizarre way to live your life. 'The hardest thing was trying to keep him hooked. He always wanted to speak to Missy Falcao on the phone or video call, which I couldn't do. I snared my murdered aunt's rapist as flirty Facebook honey trap when cops gave up & botched sting…then sicko told evil lie 'It was difficult protecting my own sanity too. Authorities weren't interested in catching him so it was down to me. It left me frustrated, nauseous and with nightmares." Speaking ahead of the release of Amazon Prime Video documentary The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer, which recounts her battle for justice, she says her memories of her aunt are forever tainted. 'While I remember Christine and the wonderful woman she was, the grief you experience is untold and it's hard to distinguish between the memories and her traumatic murder," she says. 'Her life was taken from her in the most awful circumstances, we know she struggled, she fought him off her and tried her best to survive but he took that away. 11 11 'The attack was so cruel that it's difficult to remember the lovely memories, often all I can imagine is her lying in a bed bleeding to death.' Liverpudlian Christine was reeling from the passing of her husband Robbie, of Northern Ireland, from liver cancer, when she was violently killed in 2014. She was discovered dead in her South African lodge a day after withdrawing £1,000 to pay her staff, which had vanished when lodge manager Noelle Davis stumbled upon the grizzly crime scene. 'It's like a nightmare,' Noelle said through tears. 'She was strangled, stabbed, raped. I was sick… I couldn't cope with it… it was so unreal.' I broke down. I physically cried and cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances Lehanne Sergison When she summoned all the staff to break the news, there was one notable absence - Ndlovu - and when a teammate called him he yelled 'it's not me, it's not me.' By then, he was heading 340miles away to the Zimbabwe border after forcing his friend Hope to drive him at knifepoint so he could temporarily leave South Africa. Recalling the news of her aunt's death, Lehanne says: 'It was very weird, excruciatingly painful like an electric shock running through my body.' 'Hunt the b******' With Ndlovu in another country, the investigation soon dried up and Lehanne says the Foreign Office were 'all platitudes, all ticking boxes' but didn't aid her attempts to catch the killer. After a year, the South African government had yet to see an extradition order, which made Lehanne feel Christine 'was forgotten about' so she began her own search for answers on Facebook. The internet became a 'useful tool' because she was unable to travel to South Africa due to having such severe chronic asthma that she's hospitalised every six weeks. That year, Noelle informed Lehanne that Ndlovu has been spotted at a Johannesburg church and longing to 'hunt the b****** down' she told police, who monitored the area but didn't find him. 'I was told 'the chances of finding him are nil.' We saw it as a lost opportunity,' she adds. On the second anniversary of her death, Lehanne looked again at Ndlovu's Facebook profile only to see he had multiple accounts with varied spellings and that wasn't all. 'My head was shooting off all over the place, my stomach was in knots,' she says. 'He was having an active life on Facebook.' On some the profiles, he spouted religious verses but on others she realised he was actively posting on dating pages and described wanting 'a serious partner' of 'any age'. Determined to bring him to justice, Lehanne created her Missy Falcao fake profile, named after her two ex-racing greyhounds, and took a generic photo from the internet. Slowly, she added friends and posted pictures and comments to make the account look more legitimate. Within a few weeks she sent Ndlovu a flirty message. Lehanne described being 'barely able to take a breath' and panicking when he replied 'thanx (sic) hey… u are 1 in a million'. 'My heart was in my mouth, my stomach was doing somersaults," she adds. She claimed to be 27 years old, originally from Ghana, and an air stewardess, which acted as cover for the weird times she messaged, due to the time difference. Soon his messages became more flirty, with him calling her 'princess' and sending kiss-face emojis and eventually he revealed he was in the Johannesburg suburb of Brixton, and she obtained his phone number. She continued to extract information from him to buy police time and to find out more details in order for them to track him down - despite saying that flirting with him 'hurt every time and sickened me'. But the South African police refused to make any arrests. She contacted Sakkie Louwrens, the detective on the case, only to find he was now a private investigator. 'It snowballed from there,' Lehanne says. Sakkie convinced cops to try to triangulate Ndlovu's phone - where they track people through their mobile signal. Unfortunately, it wasn't successful. Sakkie said they were 'not far from him' when his phone battery died, meaning he could no longer be traced. After two days of silence, Ndlovu told 'Missy' his phone had been stolen but was growing suspicious of her and asked 'are you for real?' It set off alarm bells to Lehanne, fearing he was 'slipping away'. But police were planning a sting operation and took over contacting him on a local mobile phone. It gave a glimmer of hope to the Brit, who had exchanged thousands of messages with Ndlovu over nearly two and a half years. Shockingly, after the police operation date was pushed back, Ndlovu suddenly disappeared and cut all contact with Missy. Neither Lehanne nor police heard from him again. 'The moment to capture him, arrest him and get justice was gone forever, Missy Falcao was no more… and I felt lost,' she says. 'I broke down. I cried and cried. Police should have made it work. It felt like Christine didn't matter… there were no more chances.' 'To hell with it' In 2020, on the six year anniversary of her aunt's death, Lehanne disobeyed Foreign Office orders by sharing a picture of Ndlovu and his horrific crimes. For years Lehanne had been told 'never publish his photo' on Facebook in case it jeopardised the investigation but one moment pushed her over the edge. 'I thought, 'This case is dead in the water' then I saw a photo on his Facebook account of him suited and booted and enjoying life. 'I thought, 'To hell with it, I have nothing to lose' and published a post showing his face and revealing the horrific things he did to Christine. And it went viral.' Doomscrolling on her phone nearly 8,000 miles away in Johannesburg, Mellisa Le Hannie saw the post - which had been shared 70,000 times - and immediately recognised the man's face. It was their family gardener of five years, who was their 'best employee', and lived at the bottom of their garden with his girlfriend in a shack. 'I couldn't believe it could be him. I left him alone with my wife, my daughters, fixing things in the house,' Mellisa's horrified father Andrew Du Preez said. Ian knew they had 'one opportunity' to snare the killer and brought onboard former army reservist Reg Crewe to accompany police and ensure he didn't get away again. 'He looked like he had seen a ghost,' Reg said, recalling how Ndlovu stumbled out of his front door to be cuffed and marched to a police van Lehanne was kept abreast with the developments and when she saw the monster in cuffs she couldn't believe it - after six years he was finally captured. 'It's still hard for me to believe it's real,' she says. 'The tears just kept coming. I contacted lots of family members and friends. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops." But in the back of her mind, Lehanne feared Ndlovu may still evade justice because in South Africa 80 per cent of murder charges fail to secure a conviction. 'Zero remorse' In the weeks leading up to the trial in 2022, her health drastically declined and she ended up in intensive care. Sickening Ndlovu denied all five charges against him and claimed in court that Christine was in love with him and that they had consensual intercourse regularly. What he didn't realise was the damning evidence against him - including semen from the crime scene - and damning witnesses testimony. Ndlovu's pal Hope, who gave him money and escorted him to the Zimbabwe border, testified that he had been forced to drive at knifepoint proving he was 'a man on the run'. His ex-girlfriend of three years confirmed that he phoned her to say he was fleeing South Africa because 'I just murdered a white lady' while travelling in the car. Ndlovu was said to have 'shown zero remorse' throughout the case and was sentenced to two life sentence for raping and murdering Christine. When Lehanne was told the news in her hospital bed, she recalled being 'so insanely happy' that she 'cried and cried and cried'. Civil rights organisation Action Society say every day in South Africa 153 rapes are committed, yet only nine are reported, and up to 11 women are killed. Kaylynn Palm, head of the non-profit organisation, says there was one three-month period where 900 women were butchered and adds: 'Our bodies are crime scenes' Andrew says: 'We wanted to show the horrendous scale of femicide in South Africa and the world. It's an important story to tell because justice was found due to Lehanne refusing to give up.' The justice system runs on limited resources and 'moves at a pregnant snail's pace', says Kaylynn, pointing out it can take as long as four years for a case to conclude, during which time evidence and documents can be lost. Fortunately Ndlovu is now locked away. Lehanne says it's a relief knowing he 'can't do that to someone again' and adds that her long fight taught her one thing. 'Never give up on anything, be tenacious, noisy, a nuisance,' she says. Reflecting on her nearly three years undercover to snare Ndlovu, Lehanne believes Christine would have thought it 'gutsy, pretty foolish'. After a few moments pause, thinking about her 'lovely, chatty Scouser' aunt, she concludes: 'But I know she would have done the same for me.'
