A man sexually abused as a boy by former basketball coach Bill Kenneally described the wider Kenneally family in Waterford as being “like the Kennedys in America”, a commission examining the response of State agencies to allegations of abuse by the 72-year-old has heard.
Kenneally, of Laragh, Summerville Road, Waterford, is serving prison sentences totalling more than 18 years for the abuse of 15 boys on dates between 1979 and 1990.
Some of his victims have alleged there was collusion between gardaí, the Catholic Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, the former South-Eastern Health Board, Basketball Ireland, and unnamed political figures which allegedly prevented Kenneally, convicted in 2016, being arrested and charged years earlier.
A complaint was filed in 2012 by Jason Clancy of being abused as a teenager by Kenneally on dates between 1984 and 1988. In February 2016, Kenneally pleaded guilty to 10 sample charges of sexually abusing 10 teenage boys in the Waterford area between 1984 and 1987 and was jailed for 14 years and two months.
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During the case, it emerged that two senior gardaí in Waterford were informed in 1987 that Kenneally had abused another boy, but the matter was not properly investigated after no formal complaint was made.
A State-established commission of investigation into allegations against Kenneally, to include an examination into the roles and responses of State agencies to those allegations, began work in late 2018. In early 2019, more charges were filed against Kenneally.
In late 2019, retired High Court judge Mr Justice Michael White took over as chairman of the commission after Mr Justice Barry Hickson retired.
Last May, Kenneally pleaded guilty on the sixth day of his trial to 13 sample charges in relation to 266 counts of abuse of five boys in locations in Waterford, Cork and Kilkenny between 1978 and 1993. He received a 4½-year sentence consecutive to the 14-year term.
The commission up to this week conducted its hearings in private because vulnerable witnesses were involved and in order not to prejudice criminal proceedings against Kenneally.
On Monday, it began two weeks of public hearings with evidence from journalist Damien Tiernan, a former southeast correspondent with RTÉ. He said that after The Irish Times broke a story in 2013 about the Garda investigation into allegations against Kenneally, he followed up the matter over years.
Mr Tiernan carried out interviews for a documentary, The Lost Boys, broadcast by RTÉ Primetime in May 2016. Shown during Monday’s hearing, it featured an interview on April 6th, 2016 with retired Supt Seán Cashman, who told Mr Tiernan the reason he had not arrested Kenneally after a businessman disclosed to him in late 1987 that his schoolboy son was one of two boys being abused by Kenneally, was because no formal complaint was made by any victim until years later.
Supt Cashman said he had asked to interview the man’s son but the man refused, saying the boy was getting medical treatment and a doctor had advised that talking to gardaí would be detrimental to his care. The man repeated that refusal some days later when he and Insp PJ Hayes, since deceased, went to his home to ask him to reconsider, Supt Cashman said. Without a statement of complaint from any injured parties, he felt his hands were tied, he said.
He had contacted Billy Kenneally snr, a former Fianna Fáil politician, whom he knew from seeing after Mass, and told him it was alleged that his nephew was sexually abusing boys. Billy Kenneally had said he would get him to go to the station and Bill Kenneally had come in a “broken man”, saying he knew why he was there and was glad to be there because he wanted to be looked after or words to that effect.
He had not arrested Kenneally because there was no evidence and, within days, was told he was under the care of a psychiatrist, Supt Cashman said. There was no “cover-up”, he said.
Mr Justice White noted Supt Cashman has given his own evidence to the commission during its private hearings.
Mr Tiernan also said a man abused by Kenneally had told him he was fully aware at the time of the power of the Kenneally family in Waterford and described them as a “big powerhouse of a family”.
The man had said Bill Kenneally had taken a photograph of him naked “for if I ever said anything” and the Kenneallys were “like the Kennedys of America”.
“I think he meant powerful,” Mr Tiernan said.
Mr Tiernan said a former Fianna Fáil TD, Donie Ormonde, had told him a Catholic priest, Monsignor John Shine, a brother of Bill Kenneally’s mother, had asked for help in getting the news about his nephew suppressed after news of the Garda investigation broke in 2013.
