An 80-year-old former scout leader has been sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for abusing five young boys, all scouts, in the 1970s and early 1980s.
At Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Francis Comerford imposed a 16-month term on Jim Harmon, of Pinewood in Shannon, for each of the five boys he indecently assaulted.
The abuse happened over a six-year period between 1976 and 1981 at locations in Clare and Limerick when Harmon was aged between 33 and 38.
Addressing the complainants – all now men in their 50s – Judge Comerford said they had been “denied justice for a very, very long time”.
One of the five said in a victim impact statement that he has carried what happened to him for decades “and those decades are matched by the others who brought this case”.
“I therefore hope the court can appreciate that five of us in our 50s nearly have 250 years of hurt; the ripples add many more years to this, this is the impact of evil,” he said.
The man said that Harmon’s victims were “young children, seven and eight years of age, children who still believed in Santa who were supposed to have innocence in their lives, making their communions”.
Their lives “have been forever altered and corrupted by the deviant nature of a predator,” he added.
The man asked: “We know that predators do not operate in isolation so are we five just the unluckiest children – or are there more?”
Describing Harmon as a “prolific paedophile”, another victim told the court that he “used a position of trust to deceive parents and their children to repeatedly molest vulnerable young boys with no regard for the impact his actions had on his many young victims”.
The man said he is thankful for the decent life he has achieved “despite the devious efforts of Jim Harmon to destroy my innocence for his now perverted pleasure”.
Judge Comerford noted that one of the five informed his mother that Harmon – who lived in the Garryowen area of Limerick at the time of his offending – had indecently assaulted him in 1981 while in the Scouts.
She informed local scouting authorities who took action against Harmon and dismissed him from his senior scouting role in 1982.
“It didn’t go any further” and gardaí were not informed at the time, the judge said.
Judge Comerford added that a complaint by one of the five to gardaí in 1996 “went nowhere” while the Director of Public Prosecutions recommended that no prosecution take place against Harmon concerning a complaint by the same man in 2014 and made the same direction concerning a separate complaint by another victim in 2016.
It was only after Scouting Ireland had set up a helpline for those abused by adults in the organisation that another man came forward to make a complaint against Harmon and the older complaints were reviewed, he added.
Judge Comerford said the “exhaustive” garda investigation that resulted in Harmon’s guilty pleas involved 80 witness statements being taken.
Counsel for the State Lorcan Connolly said that, in the 1970s, Harmon was well respected in Limerick scouting circles and had the trust of families to bring their boys away on overnight camping trips.
One of the five victims, 54-year-old Ruairi Hickey, told gardaí that Harmon abused him when he was aged nine or ten while the two played chess on a scouting trip to Holy Island in Co Clare.
in his victim impact statement, Mr Hickey – originally from Limerick’s North Circular Road – said: “I remember seeing the other two walking away and being powerless, knowing and dreading what was to come”.
He was the only one of the five to waive his right to anonymity and said that Harmon’s abuse was regular.
Another victim said that, on camping trips, Harmon “told scouts that they weren’t allowed to wear underpants under their pyjamas”.
Mr Connolly told the court that in “a remarkable coincidence” another one of the victims first disclosed the abuse during a telesales call in the early 2000s to a man who also happened to be a victim of Harmon.
Both men had lived in Limerick and were in the scouts.
Harmon had previous indecent assault conviction
Sergeant Niall Donovan, of Roxboro Garda Station in Limerick, told the court that Harmon has one previous conviction from 2017 imposed at Waterford Circuit Court for the indecent assault of a young boy scout in 1976 where he received a suspended sentence of one year and three months.
Sgt Donovan said that Harmon married a widowed woman in1994 and was stepfather to her five children.
He said the couple took in a six-year-old child under a foster care arrangements with the HSE.
Harmon’s wife died in 2000.
Sgt Donovan said that Harmon worked as ground crew for the RAF from 1960 to 1973 and with now defunct semi-state agency, Shannon Development, from 1973 to 2003.
Harrison’s counsel Donal Cronin said his client is alone in the world after becoming estranged from his family following the Waterford case.
Mr Cronin said that Harmon was himself a victim of similar type behaviour in the past and expressed profound regret for his actions.
Speaking after today’s hearing, one of the victims said he was happy with the sentence imposed.
“I wanted him convicted. I wanted him going somewhere. I wanted him to hear the cell door close behind him.”
