Pensioner is cleared of church assault

Pensioner is cleared of church assault

2 April 2014

A BALLYNAHINCH pensioner has been cleared of assaulting a teenage boy during an extraordinary stand-off at the town’s congregational church.

Police were already at the church on September 1 last year to break up a row between parishioners when the boy claimed 68-year-old Elizabeth English grabbed his arm and left a red mark.

Officers had been called after a group of protesters — who want their minister removed — shouted, stamped whistled and jeered at the Rev. George Speers. At the height of the trouble the plug was pulled on the church organ and protesters shouted “Out, Out, Out”.

At Downpatrick Court on Monday the teenage boy alleged to have been injured during the trouble said he and his sister were with an older friend at the end of the church service when Ms. English came over and assaulted him.

He said he then went and informed a police officer at the scene.

However, a defence solicitor told the court that while a discussion had taken place his client never touched the boy.

The solicitor said that the case should be dismissed because of inconsistencies between the witnesses’ testimonies, relating to where they were standing during the incident and which arm the pensioner was alleged to have grabbed.

District Judge Greg McCourt agreed and found Ms. English, with an address at Carlisle Avenue in Ballynahinch, not guilty of common assault.

“I am convinced that there are no circumstances under which I could convict,” he said.

Following the row at Ballynahinch Congregational Church on September 1 last year, the protesters acknowledged it had been “unseemly”. They said, however, that they reached breaking point after a series of long-running theological and personality clashes.

The protesting group, which claims to be in the majority, no longer considers the Rev. Speers their minister and say they have voted him out.

The Rev. Speers, who has his supporters, has only released one statement, in which he said he would “not be deterred from preaching the Gospel by the illegal actions of a group of protesters”.