Former cleric Tony Walsh (75), who is suspected of abusing hundreds of children over decades and is back on the streets following his recent release from prison, laughed when the Sunday World confronted him in Dublin city centre this week and asked him if he still posed a threat to kids.
When our reporter asked the notorious predator why he found the question funny, he said: “I’m just going to mass.”
Asked more questions about his horrific abuse of children, he repeated: “I’m just going to mass. Please leave me alone.”
He then went into the Pro Cathedral, the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin.
The Sunday World can reveal that Walsh has been visiting the Pro Cathedral on a daily basis and has been staying in a hotel in Dublin’s north inner city since his prison release.
He has been spotted on numerous occasions strolling through the streets of the capital.The Murphy report into clerical child abuse described Walsh as “the most notorious child sexual abuser” to come to its attention and detailed how the Catholic Church in Ireland and the Vatican tried to hush up his crimes, despite a litany of complaints against him starting the in the 1970s.
By the 1980s, a report conducted for the Archdiocese of Dublin described Walsh as “a very disturbed man who is always going to be dangerous” and “could not be let near schools, children, confession etc”.
The former cleric, who has since been defrocked, carried out a litany of horrific rapes and sexual attacks on multiple children over decades, starting in the early 1970s.
Walsh was released from prison last November after serving multiple sentences for his assaults.
The Sunday World tracked him down to a hotel in Dublin 1 where he mingled with members of the public, including young children completely unaware that the man in their midst was one of Ireland’s most notorious paedophiles.
From the time he was a trainee cleric, twisted Walsh, known as a ‘singing priest’ for doing Elvis impersonations in the All Priest’s Show in the 1970s, was abusing young boys and girls. He went on to become one of worst clerical child abusers in the country.
He has more than 40 convictions for a series of crimes against children — but his true number of victims is believed to be in the hundreds, according to the Murphy report.
Walsh abused the children from the 1970s through to the 1990s but little was done despite priests, canons, monsignors, bishops and the Archbishop of Dublin knowing of complaints against him.
Church authorities in Ireland asked the Vatican to defrock him in 1993 but Rome didn’t officially do so until 1996.
He carried out further attacks during that time, including sexually assaulting a boy in a toilet after his grandfather’s funeral.
The Murphy report revealed that the Vatican tried to stop Irish church authorities from defrocking Walsh despite his abusive behaviour being known about since the 1970s.
The report said church figures from priests up to Archbishop of Dublin Desmond Connell knew about his behaviour.
Walsh had been abusing children from the time he was trainee priest and decades later would be convicted of some of those offences.
Just two days after he was appointed as a priest in Ballyfermot in Dublin in 1978, the parents of an eight-year-old boy complained that he had abused their son.
Walsh denied carrying out the abuse, no action was taken and the archdiocese did not respond to the parents.
The priest who received the complaint about Walsh informed church authorities “the parents are most responsible people and there is no danger of publicity”.
The mother of a 14-year-old boy made another complaint to the parish priest that her son was abused between 1978 and 1979.
There is no record of the archdiocese being informed and no action was taken other than fellow “singing priest” Fr Michael Cleary, who was based in Ballyfermot, going to the boy’s home in 1980 “to educate him on male sexuality” and telling him Walsh was sorry for what he had done.
Cleary was a celebrity priest with his own TV and radio shows who it later emerged had fathered two children with his housekeeper.
A youth co-ordinator who went on to become a priest also complained to the church about Walsh’s inappropriate activities with young girls at a summer camp between 1980 and 1982 — but no action was taken.
Numerous complaints and concerns were raised over the following years, including by multiple priests, but several felt things were being hushed up.
In April 1985 Monsignor Alex Stenson met with the serial abuser over assault allegations.
Walsh denied nothing and also admitted abusing another boy in Wicklow, which the diocese had not heard about previously. He agreed to go to a psychiatrist.
The following October another complaint of abuse was made against Walsh. He denied it and no action was taken.
He was moved from Ballyfermot to Westland Row and in a letter described by the Murphy report as “astonishing”, Archbishop Connell wrote to Walsh saying: ‘I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your dedicated work in Ballyfermot.”
There were numerous more complaints after he moved and his housekeeper said there were always children in the house, boys stayed overnight and she saw boys leaving Walsh’s room.
She also found condoms and syringes in his room and also found her own underwear which had been “used” in Walsh’s room.
By 1988 Walsh had admitted to the church that he was “involved with boys around once a fortnight”. He was sent to a treatment centre in Stroud in England but returned to active duty on his return to Dublin and was appointed chaplain at a hospital for older people.
By the early 1990s the church had begun a formal investigation into his behaviour.
He later went back to Stroud treatment centre but would tell locals he was priest counsellor at the clinic and told a family he would babysit for them.
Walsh was finally formally dismissed from the priesthood in 1996 and went on to serve a series of prison sentences for abusing multiple young boys before his release last November.
He spent more than 20 years in prison since 1995 when he was first convicted of indecent assault and he went on to be convicted of numerous more sex attacks on children over the years, including 16 years with four years suspended handed down in 2011 for the rape and abuse of three victims.
Judge Martin Nolan described Walsh as “evil” as he handed down another four-year sentence in 2022 for assaults of three boys in the 1980s.