OPINION/Vincent Browne: The Prime Time story of the abuse of young boys and girls is truly shocking. There was the monstrous abuse by Father Tony Walsh, one of the Father Trendys of his day, who masturbated on top of the terrified Ken O'Reilly, an altar boy who had officiated at his ordination Mass. Father Walsh brutally raped another young boy in the Phoenix Park and abused an unknown number of other children, including a child he accosted at a funeral.
Then there was the sex ring operated by Father Bill Kearney and Father Frank McCarthy - one weekend they would bring boys down to Father Kearney's house in Dunlavin and the next to Father McCarthy's home in Dublin and abuse them in turn.
Father Ivan Payne abused Andrew Madden and at least eight other children, including sick children in the Children's Hospital, Crumlin. Father Thomas Naughton abused altar boys at Ballymount in Wicklow, then in Donnycarney and Ringsend in Dublin. Father Paul McGennis sexually abused Marie Collins and took obscene photographs of her, and Father Noel Reynolds abused more than 100 children.
They used the power, paraphernalia, icons, appeal and imagery of their religion to lure these children into their web. They used their status as priests to shield them from exposure.
In 1992 Father Tony Walsh was found by a diocesan tribunal to have been guilty of the sexual abuse of several children. He did not deny the charges made against him. He was defrocked but appealed to Rome, claiming his actions arose from a sickness.
What is certain is that the Catholic Church authorities knew he had committed several serious crimes repetitively over several years. What is also certain is that the Catholic Church authorities, at least in his case, believed there was no canon law or other inhibition in preventing them reporting the matter to gardaí: they have revealed in the past few days that they made some contact with gardaí concerning this abuse but failed to make a full disclosure.
There is no possible justification for failing to make gardaí fully aware at the time of what the Dublin diocese knew of Father Tony Walsh's conduct. It is not a question here of inadequately appreciating the nature of paedophilia - they clearly did for they defrocked him.
When the iniquity of Fathers Kearney and McCarthy became known in the late 1980s there was no attempt by the diocese to investigate the scale of their abuse or contact any of their victims.
The case of Father Ivan Payne is worse, much worse. One of the diocesan bishops, Dr Dermot O'Mahony, was informed of his abuse of Andrew Madden but nothing was done. Father Payne admitted the abuse and was sent for treatment with no question of informing gardaí of the serious crimes that had occurred. Instead Father Payne was sent to Sutton parish and promoted to the position of deputy presiding judge at the diocesan marriage tribunal.
Only when Andrew Madden went public was he removed from parish work, by which time he had abused several more boys.
The bishop to whom the abuse was first reported, Dr O'Mahony, refused to co-operate with the gardaí, as did Father Payne. Cardinal Desmond Connell made £30,000 available to Father Payne to compensate Andrew Madden and stave off a civil action. Cardinal Connell said, after he had loaned Father Payne £30,000 from diocesan funds to compensate Andrew Madden:
"I have compensated nobody. I have paid out nothing whatever in compensation. So the finances of the diocese are not in any way used to settle. . . to make settlements of that kind," he said.
Father Thomas Naughton's conduct in Ballymount was reported to the parish priest there by a former garda, John Brennan. Father Naughton was simply moved to another parish where he continued his abuse. John Brennan was ostracised by the Church authorities. When gardaí finally caught up with Father Naughton, Cardinal Connell failed to tell them of the evidence of the abuse in Ballymount.
Marie Collins did not tell of her abuse by Father McGennis while she was a child until she was well into adulthood. When she finally made a complaint she was told at Archbishop's House that no other complaint had ever been made about Father McGennis. But precisely at that time complaints were being made by Brenda Doyle of Edenmore about the same priest's conduct.
Subsequently Marie Collins was informed that Father McGennis had admitted taking obscene photos of her but gardaí were not informed. Then when Father McGennis was convicted of abusing other children the diocese claimed credit for having co-operated with gardaí. When Marie Collins challenged Cardinal Connell on this he replied they had not claimed to have co-operated "fully" with gardaí.
RTE's Prime Time (and particularly the producer/director of the programme, Mary Raftery and the programme editor, Noel Curran) deserve our thanks for revealing not a story of abuse - for we already knew about that - but the story of the concerted cover up and deceptions and contemptuous dismissals of complaints.
The yardstick of the Dublin archdiocese's "profound regret" for all that has happened is that one of the vilest abusers, Father Frank McCarthy, who operated the sex ring with Father Kearney, now works in the communications office of the cardinal's establishment, presumably advising on how the fall out from all this should be handled.