A settlement of €325,000 has been paid by a religious order to a man from Co Sligo who suffered child sex abuse at the hands of a priest while the victim's father lay on his deathbed. The payment, which was made by the order in the last 10 days, is the largest known settlement in a clerical sex abuse case.
It has emerged that the priest at the centre of the case, Father Peter Kennedy of the Kiltegan Fathers, is at the centre of a major investigation, with allegations from 18 individuals against him stretching back to the early 1980s.
The current whereabouts of Father Kennedy, who was in London until earlier this year, are unknown.
The Kiltegan Fathers made the payment following the settlement of a High Court case on July 28th.
Previous large settlements have included €300,000 from the Diocese of Ferns to Mr Colm O'Gorman, who was abused by Father Sean Fortune, and 250,000 from the Archdiocese of Dublin to Mr Mervyn Rundle, who was abused by Father Tom Naughton, also a Kiltegan Father.
The Kiltegan Fathers have been commended by child protection advocates over the speed with which it reached the Sligo settlement and the non-adversarial way it approached the case. The order is also co-operating fully with the Garda investigation.
Father Kennedy has not been in full-time ministry since 1985. It is believed the Wicklow-based order may have been aware of allegations since then.
Father Kennedy had been living and working in London under the supervision of the order since that time, most recently as a taxi-driver.
The abuse settlement related to allegations dating back to 1982, when the claimant was a 13-year-old boy living in the Co Sligo area. Father Kennedy was acting as a locum priest to the local priest. In the man's statement of claim to the High Court, he said the abuse happened over a period of months, when his father was dying from cancer and being cared for in the home. Some of the abuse occurred in the room his father was in. According to the plaintiff's mother, who spoke to The Irish Times, the abuse came to an end when she walked in on an attempted assault.
A local curate was informed but he refused to take a complaint. However, Father Kennedy left the parish immediately.
The abuse had a detrimental effect on the man in later years, including self-harm and serious alcohol abuse. He is now recovering from this and is living abroad.
According to the man's mother, the family was approached by a nun in 1997 who had been providing counselling to her son. The nun told her that under the church's child protection guidelines she would inform authorities in the Diocese of Achonry, which covers Co Sligo.
"We were subsequently told that the diocese said they had no responsibility for the priest because he was an order priest, and that they had no records of the abuse," the mother said.
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Kiltegan Fathers refused to comment on the case or state when they became aware of allegations against Father Kennedy. Mr Colm O'Gorman, head of One in Four, commended the Kiltegan priests for their speedy handling of the case, and said it should act as a model to other orders and dioceses. "There would appear to be some questions about their actions in the past, and about the Diocese of Achonry's response in 1998," he said. "However, the Kiltegan Fathers have to be commended for the way in which they responded.They have done what the bishops have failed to do and demonstrated that the legal compensation route does not have to be an adversarial and damaging process. It's a pity that many diocese won't do the same."