IRELAND
Irish Independent
By Dearbhail McDonald and Tim Healy
Thursday November 22 2012
THE Director of Public Prosecutions tried three times to prosecute the choirmaster whose bank and pension accounts have been frozen following a record €4.7m damages award for raping and abusing two cousins when they were schoolgirls.
One of Joseph Carrick’s victims, Jacqueline O’Toole, who was raped and then left pregnant at 15, was awarded €4m – the highest award ever for an abuse victim.
The award dwarfs the previous record, reached only last week, when a mother of three who was raped and sexually abused as a child by her godfather was awarded €2.8m damages by a High Court jury.
Ms O’Toole and Geraldine Nolan claim that they were repeatedly raped and sexually abused by Carrick, whom they met after joining a local church choir in the early 1970s.
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