“Sex abuse card played in vendetta,” jury told 23/6/14
The jury on the trial of Father John Angus Macdonald is due to go out and consider
the evidence this afternoon.
Macdonald, originally of South Uist, is alleged to have raped a nine-year-old girl,
said to have happened when he was a young teenager in the 50s and 60s.
He also faces a charge of carrying out indecent practices on a young boy. A third
accusation of repeated rape against the girl has been dropped.
In his closing speech to the jury,prosecutor David Taylor queried why, following
a confrontation with Macdonald over the alleged abuse the woman did not “go the whole
hog” and claim he confessed, if she just wanted to blacken his name.
Mr Taylor added: “I wonder why the accused has such a clear memory” of this meeting
if it was just another discussion.
Similarly, if the man was “here to seek revenge,” he would have been keener to speak
out and not have to be prompted over things, he added.
He said the man “was not here to fabricate or make things up.”
Defence QC Mark Stewart stressed the “trial has nothing to do with the Catholic Church.”
He stated: “The Catholic Church is not on trial here. A priest is not on trial here.”
He said: “These are ancient allegations made about a young teenage boy - about half
a century ago before he had a career.”
The QC stated the male accuser “is a liar” and a “conspiracy theorist” while the
woman is “suffering from a delusion.”
The man was “inconsistent” in his evidence, indicating someone who “doesn’t really
know what he intended to say when he came in here. “
Mr Stewart told the jury: “The biggest killer piece of evidence “ over the man was
what Macdonald allegedly said in Gaelic as he carried out the offence.
“But Monday was the first day he ever told anyone about this and he then said it
didn’t have an English translation.”
This was the “icing on the cake” as what likelihood this “popped into his head” some
50 or so years later, he said.
The defence lawyer said there was no explanation why the man remained in contact
with Macdonald over the years and invites him to conduct his wedding ceremony and
children’s baptisms.
The man was “unhappy and bitter” over a historic row and decades later is still “driven
by burning hostility” for some unknown reason against Macdonald, said Mr Stewart.
Only when his “intervention and anger” by other routes achieved nothing does he “play
the sexual abuse card” at a time when there was a “fevered public view about Catholic
priests, “ he said with Macdonald being an “easy soft target.”
On the other hand, the woman who claimed she was raped “”genuinely believed” what
she was saying, he said.
But she sought an explanation for a lack of fulfilment and of self-respect in her
life, as she suggested to the court, which had led to dishonesty and losing her job
due to alcoholism, he told the jury.
Remaining in personal and social contact with Macdonald, even after her memory was
said to return, showed she was “happy to be in his company,” he added.
The “complete destruction” of her account came from two men - who she also accused
of “vile sexual abuse” on her, and thus would have been eye-witnesses, he said.
One of the men - who never held a passport and could not have been in Australia as
she insisted - “laid to rest once and for all,” the girl was never traded for a place
on a football team.