GARDAÍ IN Cork have resubmitted eight files to the Director of Public
Prosecutions relating to complaints by seven women and a man that they
were sexually assaulted as children by a priest in the Diocese of
Cloyne.
The complaints against the now elderly cleric in the new
combined file allege that he sexually assaulted the women and the man
when they were teenagers at locations in north and mid-Cork in the
1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Seven of the eight files had already been
submitted to the DPP who decided against a prosecution of the cleric,
who is now in his early 70s, but gardaí have since resubmitted the seven
files along with an eighth file where a decision is still pending.
The
priest, who was identified by Ian Elliott, the chief executive of the
National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, as Fr
B, has been interviewed by gardaí in relation to each of the complaints
and has denied that he ever abused any of the complainants.
However,
gardaí, in their combined file which was was resubmitted to the DPP
earlier this month, have pointed out the similarities in terms of the
complaints made by the women with regard to opportunity and the type of
sexual assault that they allege he perpetrated on them.
It is
understood gardaí have pointed to what they believe is a pattern of
behaviour by the priest who would have come in contact with the women
when they were as young as 14 years of age in the 1970s and 1980s at
locations in north Cork.
The complaint made by the man relates to
an allegation that he was sexually assaulted by the priest when he was
just 12 in the early 1990s at a location in mid-Cork after the priest
befriended his mother.
It is understood that all eight
complainants have made statements to the commission of investigation
chaired by Ms Justice Yvonne Murphy into clerical sexual abuse in the
Diocese of Cloyne and that a chapter of a 400-page report relates to Fr B
and the allegations made against him.
SIC: IT/IE