ANALYSIS: The latest priest child rapist from the
Dublin archdiocese was named yesterday, thanks to the persistence of his
victims.
THE BAD, the ugly and, somewhat
surprisingly, the good – or at least what passed for good in the morally
bankrupt culture of the Archdiocese of Dublin at the time – are all to
be found in the tale of Tony Walsh, one of the most notorious of the
city’s paedophile priests, convicted yesterday for his repeated rape of
one small boy and his sexual assaults on two others during the 1970s and
1980s.
He is the subject of the missing chapter 19 of the Murphy
report, redacted so as to not prejudice the trial which concluded
yesterday.
To glean some insight into the enormous damage done by
this priest, it is worth remembering again what the victim called
“David” had to say on the RTÉ
Prime Time programme
Cardinal Secrets in 2002:
“When I have a dream, I am
basically being raped again and again and again and I could not
under
any circumstances overstress the word ‘raped’. I am being raped in my
sleep. It mightn’t happen every night of the week but it happens at
least two or three times a week and I just don’t sleep because I just,
the minute I close my eyes and get back into the sleep I’m getting raped
again so I stay awake and I . . . What they do, they give me drugs to
put me to sleep, or I take a bottle of whiskey if I don’t want to go
near the doctor.”
David is from Ballyfermot and was raped by Walsh
for over four years, starting when he was only seven. Walsh had the run
of the local national schools, and that was where he first singled out
David and many other young victims.
With great pain and anguish to
himself, David has spent years seeking justice for the enormous wrongs
done to him. He has awaited the conclusion of yesterday’s case for over
eight years – an unconscionable delay by any standards.
In what
could be argued to be a gross abuse of process, the legal system
permitted delay after delay in the various – entirely legitimate – ruses
employed by Walsh to seek to quash the charges and postpone the trial.
David
turned up to each of these hearings, hoping against hope for some sort
of closure. Walsh persisted in his not-guilty plea, piling on the drip,
drip effect of the torture of David’s spirit.
Walsh has spent the past
eight years out of jail by virtue of being allowed by a system to
torment an immensely brave man who refused to give up.
The
appalling reality throughout the years David was being raped as a little
boy by Walsh was a veritable slew of senior and prominent clergy knew
he was a paedophile. Any one of them could have saved David and all of
Walsh’s subsequent child victims.
Ken Reilly was an altar boy at
Walsh’s ordination Mass in 1978. They lived close to each other in
Coolock on Dublin’s northside. Walsh started abusing Ken shortly after
his appointment as curate in Ballyfermot.
A few months later, Ken told
his mother, Ena. She immediately informed her own parish priest in
Coolock and also reported Walsh to Canon Val Rogers, the Ballyfermot
parish priest.
Rogers then asked fellow Ballyfermot priest Fr
Michael Cleary, the famous singer, entertainer and Late Late Show
pundit, for help.
Cleary turned up in the Reilly household at one stage
and told Ken and his mother that Walsh had admitted the abuse, and that
he (Walsh) was sorry. He then somewhat bizarrely took young Ken aside
and proceeded to inform him of the facts of life.
But as the
months passed, Ena Reilly could see that nothing was happening. Ken was
becoming deeply disturbed, banging his head off walls until he bled.
Walsh was going from strength to strength, appearing on television as a
singing priest. One of his favourite acts was as an Elvis impersonator.
There is something vilely obscene about the surviving footage of him
grinding his hips, complete with his grinning, all-priest backing band.
What
was even more disturbing, however, was Walsh was now in charge of the
largest troupe of altar boys in the country, over 60, in what was at the
time Dublin’s biggest parish.
And chillingly, he was allowed preside
over one of Ballyfermot’s most popular ecclesiastic events – the weekly
children’s Mass.
Ena Reilly decided to take matters further. She
approached one of the Dublin auxiliary bishops, James Kavanagh. He
fobbed her off by telling her that these things happen, and she
remembers he asked her to kiss his ring.
She then went to the
chancellor of the archdiocese, Msgr Alex Stenson. She was told the then
archbishop Dermot Ryan had been informed.
But nothing changed.
Meanwhile, Walsh continued his abuse. In 1986, the priest was eventually
moved out of Ballyfermot.
But it was only to another parish, Westland
Row, where he gained access to a new population of young victims. He was
convicted in 1997 for the abuse of two boys in this parish.
All
through this time, Ena Reilly heroically continued her struggle to get
someone in the Catholic Church to take her information seriously about
the danger he posed to children.
While he was eventually removed from
parish work in 1988, it was to be four years and several complaints from
further victims later before serious action was taken.
And here
we come to the good bit, or at least what passed for it in the
Archbishop’s Palace world of secrets and mental reservations – lies to
you and me.
The then incumbent, Desmond Connell, convened an internal
tribunal which concluded Walsh be defrocked. Walsh did not deny sexually
abusing the children.
His defence was he was sick rather than guilty,
and he appealed the decision of the tribunal to the Vatican.
There it
languished for a number of years, with Rome apparently considering that
some years in a monastery might be more appropriate than a full removal
from the clerical state.
It appears Connell argued strongly with
the Vatican that Walsh be laicised.
He deserves credit for this. The
tragedy is for the four years he fought – Walsh was eventually laicised
in 1996 – Connell kept the internal Dublin tribunal findings secret from
the Garda, the health board and his own priests.
It is important
to note that neither did any of the other bishops involved share their
detailed knowledge of Walsh’s crimes with the civil authorities.
These
included two members of the tribunal which decided to defrock him –
Bishop Willie Walsh, now retired, of Killaloe; and Bishop John McAreavey
of Dromore – together with other Dublin auxiliary bishops.
To the
eternal shame of each and every one of these bishops, this allowed Tony
Walsh turn up in 1994 at the funeral of an elderly man in Palmerstown,
posing as a priest.
At the meal after the Mass, he attacked the
11-year-old grandson of the deceased in the toilets, sexually assaulting
him.
The boy immediately told his parents and Walsh was arrested,
pleaded not guilty, was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison.
This was followed two years later by further convictions in respect of
six victims, for which he received a six-year sentence and was released
in 2001.
With all current charges against Walsh finally dealt with
yesterday, the way is now clear for the publication of the missing
chapter 19 of the Murphy report.
This will provide a wealth of detail on
the cover-up of abuse during the final decades of the 20th century, in
Dublin and at the highest levels of the Vatican.
Its publication, which
requires formal court sanction, is a matter to which the Minister for
Justice should apply himself with urgency.
It is the very least
this society owes to David, to Ken and Ena Reilly, and to all of Walsh’s
victims who have fought such a long, costly and painful battle for
justice.
SIC: IT/IE