Legal News

A woman who alleges she was sexually abused as a child and teenager by the brother of Irish MEP and former singer Dana Rosemary Scallon has claimed that his sister has known of the abuse for 30 years.

BBC News reports that the alleged victim told Harrow Crown Court in northwest London that the MEP told her she would pray for her, during a phone conversation which took place while the politician was attempting to reduce the impact of allegations about her brother during her election campaign for the Irish presidency in 2011. Mr Brown was part of his sister’s election campaign team at the time.

The witness says she is “furious” the allegations against Mr Brown are being refuted by his sister.

The alleged victim claims Mr Brown “touched her inappropriately” on four occasions in the UK and in the United States during the 1970s.

The mother of the alleged victim also told the court that she had spoken to John Brown about his alleged sexual abuse of her daughter when he visited the US in the 1970s – her daughter was around 10 or 11 at the time, she said.

Mr Brown denied the allegations, but she had asked him to leave the family home and had spoken to Dana on the phone.

The mother of the alleged victim said the singer had agreed to organise some treatment for her brother, which the woman understood involved seeing a priest.

The court heard that after Mr Brown’s family became aware of the allegations against him, he visited a priest and was advised to eat and sleep “well” – and be aware of the need to control any sexual urges he might feel towards children.

The family who had confronted him about his sexual abuse of their daughter met Mr Brown two years later, after Dana had advised them he had been “cured” and it was time he was “forgiven”.

However, on a further visit to the family’s home when the girl was 13 or 14 years’ old, it is alleged he went on to sexually assault her again.

John Brown, 60, denies five counts of indecent assault against two girls under the ages of 13 and 16 at various times and locations during the 1970s.

In court, Mr Brown’s defence team suggested to the alleged victim that she had fabricated the allegations against him:

"I'm suggesting to you these allegations are not true – and that the only reason you came to the police in this country is you have very little option to do otherwise, as because of all of this publicity, the defamation claim is never going to succeed in the absence of a criminal conviction in the UK."

In a TV interview, Dana Rosemary Scallon had called the allegations made against her brother “vile and malicious lies". The witness is currently involved in defamation proceedings against the MEP as a result.

The witness denied that she had invented the allegations against the defendant, however.

“It seems like an awful lot of planning for something that is so hurtful," she told the court.

The case continues.


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