The High Court has ordered that 341 former members of the Christian Brothers be served with a summons by way of a national newspaper advertisement as part of a claim for damages for child sexual assault and rape, even though it is not being alleged the men had anything directly to do with the crimes.The highly unusual move is the result of the decision of the congregation not to provide a nominee for the purposes of litigation, a legal strategy the judge has said was legal but “morally extraordinary”.Most of the men due to be named left the congregation in the 1970s and 1980s, the court has been told.A result of the congregation’s strategy is that those of the men still alive could end up being liable for damages to the man who suffered the abuse.Judge Mary Rose Gearty made the order on Wednesday in the case of a man seeking damages for the sexual and physical abuse he suffered in the CBS primary school on Stephen Street, Kilkenny, in the 1970s.The man says he was sexually assaulted and raped by Liam Coughlan (90) a former Christian Brother who taught at the school.Coughlan was jailed in 2023 for sexually assaulting numerous boys at the school during the 1970s, including the man in the case before the High Court.Last week Coughlan was sentenced to a further five years by the Circuit Criminal Court in Portlaoise, having been found guilty of sexual assault on nine former pupils of the CBS primary school on Patrick Street, Portarlington, Co Offaly, in the 1980s.The Christian Brothers, like most religious congregations, is an unincorporated association, meaning there is no legal entity that can be directly sued by people taking it to court. Most religious congregations put forward a nominee for the purposes of litigation, but for the past number of years the Christian Brothers have been opting not to do so for the purposes of claims of historical child sex abuse.[ ‘He smelled of chalk and sweat’: Pattern of school-to-school abuse uncovered in Garda search of pupil rollsOpens in new window ]To progress their cases, litigants must serve a summons on all members of the congregation who were members at the time of the alleged assaults, a difficult and expensive process.In the case before the court, 440 men who were brothers at the time have been identified, including 341 men who have since left the congregation. For most of these, the head of the congregation, Brother David Gibson, has said he does not have contact information.Gearty has now made an order that the service of summonses on the former members can be done by way of an advertisement in a national newspaper, saying it was an unusual move “but I am satisfied that the justice of the case requires it”.Barrister Andrew Young was also given permission to seek further such orders in the autumn on behalf of three other clients who are also seeking damages for sexual assault by then members of the Christian Brothers who, like Coughlan, have since been jailed for child sex abuse.Those three cases involve Coughlan, Brother Martin O’Flaherty (74), who taught alongside Coughlan in Kilkenny in the 1970s, and former Christian Brother Jack Manning (90), who taught at the CBS school in Westland Row, Dublin 2, in the 1970s.When sentencing Coughlan in Portlaoise last week, the president of the Circuit Court, Keenan Johnson, said the strategy being adopted by the congregation in the civil courts “strikes me as morally bankrupt and grossly unfair not only to victims but also to the many, many brothers who are totally innocent and blameless of any wrong doing”.The strategy, he said, appeared designed to protect the congregation’s assets “and wear down claimants through attrition”.