A WOMAN who was repeatedly sexually abused as a girl by Fr Brendan Smyth has called on Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady to apologise to her and to “walk the walk” over his handling of a church investigation into the paedophile priest.“Samantha”, who was abused by Smyth between 1974 and 1979, asked “how can he expect to head the church knowing that I was abused and raped because he didn’t do what he should have done?”
She told The Irish Times : “All I want from him is two sentences, and spoken as a man not as a priest.
“I want him to say, ‘Samantha, I’m really sorry that because I didn’t go to the guards you went through four more years of torture at the hands of Brendan Smyth. For that I am truly sorry’.”
Last month it emerged that in 1975 Cardinal Brady, then a canon lawyer in the diocese of Kilmore, took part in an investigation involving two young people who alleged abuse by Smyth.
He believed both were telling the truth and swore them to secrecy.
He reported his findings to the then bishop of Kilmore Francis McKiernan, who removed from Smyth any rights to exercise priestly ministry in the diocese. The bishop also reported the then Fr Brady’s findings to Smyth’s superiors at the Norbertine abbey in Kilnacrott, Co Cavan.
No one involved informed gardaí or any civil authorities. Smyth continued to abuse children until 1993.
“People say Seán Brady is a good man. I won’t take that from him. But for there to be change, people need to be accountable and suffer the consequences of their inaction. Otherwise there is no change,” said Samantha.
She called on him to “put your ‘sorry’ into action”. She also wanted a State-run investigation into all dioceses in Ireland, funded by the church. “There’s nothing worse than this drip, drip, drip.”
She called on “the guys on the ground [the priests] to speak out” on the sex abuse issue.
“Like Fr Brian D’Arcy, they should stand up for what they believe in,” she said. She cried watching Fr D’Arcy on a recent Late Late Show when “he talked about humility, honesty and God’s love” and when he said “I’m a nobody on the ground”. It was “what everyone is supposed to be”.
She recently met Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and his “silence was palpable” as he listened to her story.
When he did speak it was about children he was meeting at Confirmations and he wondered how anyone could abuse such children.
Samantha had satisfactory meetings with the nuns who ran the boarding school where she was abused and with the Norbertines.
At her request, they reduced the headstone over Smyth’s grave and removed the “Rev” before his name. She has also told her story to the confidential committee of the Ryan Commission. Her only interest now was in child protection.
“I want people to learn from what has happened,” she said.
Beyond The Fire , an award-winning film about the effect of clerical child sex abuse will be broadcast by TV3 tonight.RTÉ turned down an option to show the film, arguing that viewers no longer had an appetite for the subject, which it had dealt with in other films.
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