Ireland: Transcendental Meditation teacher jailed for indecent assault of a child at the Dublin centre
Request a correction or replyRecord class
Core record
Evidence status
Convicted
Authority role
Transcendental Meditation teacher at the movement's Dublin centre
Organization
Transcendental Meditation Centre, Dublin
Archive classification
This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.
The child was embedded in the movement through his parents' membership and worked at its centre under the defendant's supervision; that teacher-and-supervisor role within the organisation is what created the access.
- Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
- Institutional obedience or isolation
Evidence structure
Proceedings
2019-05-20 · conviction and sentence
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Ireland. Bernard Ward, a Transcendental Meditation teacher, was convicted of three counts of indecent assault against a child who had begun working at the Dublin TM Centre at the age of ten after his parents trained there. He was acquitted on a fourth count relating to a different location.
Documented coercion mechanisms
- supervisory authority over a child working at the centre his parents had joined
Cited record
Sources
- national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report 'Former meditation teacher jailed for sexual attacks on child', The Irish Times, 20 May 2019.
Ireland's paper of record reports the three convictions, the acquittal on the fourth count, and the centre setting.
Source provenance
Source access and integrity log
This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.
- Source and tier basis
- https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/former-meditation-teacher-jailed-for-sexual-attacks-on-child-1.3898493 Corpus classification: national-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: verdict-and-sentencing-report. SHA-256 cace802bd0fa4251b723444a1a8eee9cc94afebab3889acfe659f7b842c2de23
- Retrieval
- 2026-07-20 · Preserved
- Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
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Related record
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