A 90-year-old former Christian Brother, jailed in 2023 for the sexual abuse of primary school students in Kilkenny in the 1970s, has been found guilty of sexually abusing boys in St Patrick’s CBS primary school, Portarlington, Co Offaly, in the early to mid-1980s.Liam Coughlan, who appeared by video link from prison during a trial that started last week in the Circuit Criminal Court, Portlaoise, Co Laois, had pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of indecent assault against nine former students who attended the school on Patrick Street, Portarlington.On Friday, the jury took just an hour to find Coughlan guilty on all of the 31 counts they were asked to consider. After the verdict, Judge Keenan Johnson praised the complainants who were in court and said they could take pride in the fact that their voices had now been heard. At least one of the men was crying.During the trial the complainants gave evidence of being sexually abused by Coughlan when he would call them to the front of the class and put them on his lap while telling the other children to read their books.As well as assaults in the schoolroom, the complainants told of being sexually assaulted in a small library in the school, a shed beside the schoolyard and in the front seat of a van being driven by Coughlan.The jury was not told that Coughlan was in jail and had been convicted in two cases in 2023 involving 24 former primary school pupils from Kilkenny who made similar complaints to those in the Portarlington case, including being fondled in class in front of the other pupils.The former teacher, who has significant health problems, is still serving the 4½-year sentence he was given for the Kilkenny crimes, which arose from his time with the CBS Kilkenny boys’ primary school.[ Former Christian Brother jailed for assaulting 19 boys investigated for alleged abuse in Co LaoisOpens in new window ]A Garda investigation into the Kilkenny crimes in the late 1990s did not lead to charges being brought at that time.The former Christian Brother, who is now married and had been living in Co Waterford, was moved from Kilkenny to Portarlington at the start of the 1980s and made school principal.Most of the Portarlington crimes occurred when the victims were in sixth class and had Coughlan as their teacher, though at least one assault involved a victim in first class. “We just thought it was normal. We didn’t know any different,” one of the victims said of being abused in class by Coughlan. “I have the memory that he smelled of chalk and sweat.”In his address to the jury at the end of the trial, William Fennelly, for the prosecution, referred to complainants becoming emotional while giving evidence.“The manner of how they gave their evidence screams as loudly as anything I could say to you,” Fennelly told the jurors.“Grown men are now saying what they could not say as little boys,” he said.The claimants said they did not tell their parents what was happening at school, with one saying that, at the time, if you told you parents you had been punished at school, “they would ask you what you did that you deserved that”.Coughlan’s barrister Maurice Coffey made an application in the absence of the jury for the trial to be stopped because of the 40-year delay between the offences and charges being brought.Det Garda Elaine Conlon, from Portlaoise Garda station, who led the investigation, told the judge in the absence of the jury that most of the complainants had presumed Coughlan was dead.The first complaints were made in 2022, after the men read media reports of Coughlan being charged in relation to the Kilkenny offences.Conlon said some of the people she approached during her investigation did not want to make statements, saying they “had put that behind them”.Coughlan, who did not give evidence, gave a voluntary interview to the investigation during which he said the allegations were untrue, the court heard. The former Christian Brother is due to be sentenced later this month, when victim-impact statements will also be heard.