LOCKED UP | 

Former Scout Leader (80) jailed for abuse of five boys in 1970s and 1980s

One of the five said 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”.

Gordon Deegan

Today at 20:08

A judge has jailed an 80-year old former Limerick Scout Leader to six years and eight months in prison for molesting five young boys, all scouts, “who still believed in Santa” in the 1970s and early 1980s.

At Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Francis Comerford imposed a 16-month prison term on Jim Harmon of Pinewood, Shannon for each of the five boys he indecently assaulted over a six year period between 1976 and 1981 at locations in Clare and Limerick.

Addressing the five complainants in court – all now men in their 50s – Judge Comerford said that they have been “denied justice for a very, very long time”.

Harmon was aged 33 to 38 during the period of the indecent assaults and the counts of indecent assaults took place at Cratloe in south east Clare, Holy Island on Lough Derg, Garryowen, Limerick and the Ennis Rd, Limerick.

One of the five in his victim impact statement said that he has carried what happened to him for decades “and those decades are matched by the others who brought this case”.

He said: “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”.

ADVERTISEMENT

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”.

He said that the lives of Harmon’s victims “have been forever altered and corrupted by the deviant nature of a predator”.

He said: “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 “this predator 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 that 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 Jim Harmon – who lived in the Garryowen area of Limerick at the time of his offending – had indecently assaulted him as far back as 1981 while in the scouts.

The boy’s mother in turn informed local scouting authorities who took action against Mr Harmon and dismissed him from his senior scouting role in 1982.

Judge Comerford said that “it didn’t go any further” and gardaí were not informed at the time by the scouting authorities or Mr Harmon’s offending.

Judge Comerford said that a complaint by one of the five to gardaí in 1996 about Mr Harmon “went nowhere” while the DPP recommended that no prosecution take place against Mr Harmon concerning a complaint by the same man in 2014 and made the same direction concerning a separate complaint by another victim in 2016.

Judge Comerford stated that 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 Mr Harmon and the older complaints were reviewed.

The only one of the five to waive his anonymity, Mr Hickey said that Harmon measured him from his inner thigh to his hip, brushing against his genitals.

Mr Hickey said that Harmon’s abuse was regular.

Harmon was Leader of the 2nd Limerick Troop and another victim said on camping trips, Jim Harmon “told scouts that they weren’t allowed to wear underpants under their pyjamas”.

He said at night, Mr Harmon would come into the tent at night and put his hands into their pyjamas.

Referring to Jim Harmon, the man told gardaí that “Of f**k, who is going to be in the tent tonight?”