Spiritans reveal 233 boys at secondary schools in Ireland and abroad accused 77 priests of abuse

The Spiritan congregation, formerly the Holy Ghost Fathers, have disclosed that 233 men have made allegations of abuse against 77 Irish Spiritans in ministries throughout Ireland and overseas. Of that number, 57 men have alleged they were abused on the campus of Blackrock College in Dublin. The Spiritans also run three other colleges in Dublin, St Mary’s College in Rathmines, Templeogue College and St Michael’s, as well as Rockwell College in Co Tipperary.

[ How cover-up by Spiritans in Ireland led to child abuse in leading Sierra Leone school ]

Since 2004 the congregation has paid out over €5 million in settlements surrounding abuse claims and for support services, with 12 of those settlements made with 12 men in connection with abuse at Blackrock College.

The figures were disclosed by current Provincial of the Spiritans Fr Martin Kelly to the latest RTÉ Radio I Documentary at One series which will be broadcast at 6pm this Monday. It features two brothers who, from the ages of 12 to 17, alleged they were repeatedly sexually abused both in and on the grounds of Blackrock College.

In 2002 both brothers made statements to gardaí which led to multiple charges being brought against their alleged abuser. The then Spiritan priest was 82 and living at Blackrock College. He denied all charges and launched a legal case to halt criminal proceedings. In 2007, the courts decided that the criminal case against him should be halted and he died in 2010.

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The sexual abuse of boys by Spiritan priests first came to public attention in Ireland in March 2009 when Fr Henry Moloney was convicted of abusing Mark Vincent Healy and Paul Daly, who died in June 2011, when both were pupils at St Mary’s College, Rathmines, between 1969 and 1973. Moloney was given a suspended sentence due to ill health and as he was already under strict supervision at the Spiritans’ Kimmage Manor in Dublin. He had been out of ministry and under supervision since 1996.

A second Spiritan priest accused by Mr Healy, Fr Arthur Carragher, died in Canada in January 2011. He taught at St Mary’s in 1969. In 2001 two brothers made abuse allegations against Fr Carragher but there is no extradition treaty between Ireland and Canada, where he then lived, and he successfully resisted being tried in Ireland. The priest later admitted abusing the brothers.

In 2000 Fr Moloney had been sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for sexually assaulting two other boys at St Mary’s in the early 1970s. He served 15 months. Moloney had been dean of discipline and junior form tutor at St Mary’s, where he also coached boys in rugby.

Moloney was ordained in 1967 and taught at St Mary’s between 1968 and 1973, following which he was transferred to the Spiritan/Holy Ghost Christ the King College in Bo, Sierra Leone.

In June 2012 Mr Healy told The Irish Times he had established by then that as many as 12 Holy Ghost/Spiritan priests had by then been accused of abuse, whether in Ireland or Africa.

In December 2015 Henry Moloney, by then 77 and still based at the Spiritans’ Kimmage Manor in Dublin, was sentenced to a four-year prison term for indecently assaulting a boy at Rockwell College in the 1980s. At the hearing in Clonmel Circuit Court he had denied all charges but was found guilty of seven counts of indecent assault, an eighth charge having been withdrawn.

The trial was told of a letter written last year by Moloney to Pope Francis, asking to be laicised, in which Moloney said: “I have greatly sinned over 10 years, from 1969 to 1979, in my abusing young boys,” and that “from 1980 to 1991 there were sporadic betrayals”. He was granted laicisation in October of 2014.

[ Two Dublin brothers tell of how each, unknown to the other, was abused by priests at Blackrock College in Dublin ]

In July 2014 Mr Healy met Pope Francis in Rome for approximately 45 minutes with the only other person present being the head of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors Cardinal Seán O’Malley, who acted as translator. The meeting was “very comfortable,” Mr Healy told The Irish Times.

Mr Healy subsequently helped expose allegations of child sex abuse involving Moloney and other Spiritan priests in Africa and Canada as well as in Ireland. Influenced by his work, the Church’s child protection watchdog in Ireland, its National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC), undertook an audit of child protection at the Spiritan congregation.

Its report, published in September 2012, found that there were unacceptable failures over several decades to protect children from at least 47 alleged abusing Holy Ghost priests in its schools in Ireland. It also found that suspected abusers were often moved by the congregation, either within Ireland or abroad, provoking concern that other victims had yet to come forward.