Rev Adrian McLaughlin found guilty of stealing £10,000 from St Colman’s Parish Church in Dunmurry

A minister is facing a potential jail sentence after he was convicted him of defrauding £10,000 from his church.

Standing in the dock of Craigavon Crown Court, Rev. Adrian McLaughlin looked stunned as the jury foreperson announced the 10-2 majority verdict that the 50-year-old was guilty of fraud by abuse of position.

The jury of 10 men and two women had deliberated for just over six hours over the course of two days before declaring the Church of Ireland minister guilty.

Rev. McLaughlin was charged with abusing his position of trust at St Colman’s Parish Church in Dunmurry.

He was found to have written a cheque for £10,000 from the church bank account which he then made payable to himself.

The jury heard that while Rev. McLaughlin claimed the money was to reimburse him for money he spent himself on the “beautification and betterment” of St Colman’s parish.

He tried to cover up his fraud by filling in the cheque stub as payable to “NI Organs Ltd".

Describing how the convicted thief, “may well have giveth but he also certainly taketh away,” prosecuting counsel Joseph Murphy had highlighted to the jury that as rector, the defendant “knew full well” there was no treasurer in the church at the time and with “hundreds of thousands of pounds” going through a building fund to rebuild the church after it was decimated in a fire, “he thought sure who is going to notice a measly £10,000?”.

On Monday the jury had found him unanimously guilty of a similar offence of fraud by abuse of position by taking a £1,000 donation from a grieving widow to line his own pockets in that similarly to the first count, he “failed to give or declare the said donation to the treasurer of Church Vestry and made the cheque payable to yourself personally".

The minister was found unanimously not guilty of four further fraud offences relating to other donations, funeral collections and money obtained through a weekly Slimming World class.

Following the jury’s verdict Judge Patrick Lynch KC thanked them for their “deep consideration” of the case and advised them that he would be passing sentence “at some further stage” once pre-sentence reports had been prepared.

While Rev. McLaughlin, from Church Avenue in Dunmurry, was freed on bail until 6 September, Judge Lynch warned him his release “is no indication of what the ultimate sentence of the court will be".

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