Mary McCarthy was pinned to the priest’s bed, begging him to stop.
He had lured the 24-year-old, who was three months pregnant at the time, into his bedroom under the guise of giving her a book.
When she went to take the book from his hand, he shoved her down on the mattress and raped her.
“He never said anything,” she told the Irish Independent this week.
“I kept saying, ‘Stop, stop, stop, I’m pregnant’. But he didn’t. He raped me.”
More than 35 years later, Ms McCarthy’s memories of what happened to her that day remain vivid.
The attack wasn’t an isolated event. Two weeks after the rape, she accepted a lift home from the same priest. He raped her again.
“I never told anyone,” Mary said. “I buried it. Well, I thought I had buried it but it absolutely ruined my life.
“I never trusted anyone again, never valued myself really. And then there was everything that happened after that.
“The system... It is in no way focused on victims. It has totally broken me.”
Originally from Dunmore in Co Galway, Mary was an only child. Her father died when she was 11 and she described her relationship with her mother as difficult.
Despite the strained relations with her mother, Mary lived in the family home until her mid-20s and trained to be a hairdresser.
At the age of 24, she found herself pregnant.
Her relationship with the baby’s father had ended and Mary dreaded telling her mother, a devout Catholic, the news.
Without any siblings or close family members to confide in, she turned to one of her father’s old friends for guidance.
“He recommended I go and see this priest,” Ms McCarthy said. “He said he would help me, that he was someone who wouldn’t judge me. I had nowhere else to turn to, really.”
The family friend drove Ms McCarthy to the parochial house and for the first two meetings, she and the priest talked and drank tea in a small sitting room upstairs.
“Everything was fine,” Mary said. “There was never an issue. We talked a lot about my situation and he seemed to be very understanding. He never gave me any reason to think something was going to happen.”
On the third visit, Ms McCarthy felt something had changed.
“Straight away I noticed he was different. He seemed very agitated,” she said. “He never offered me a cup of tea or anything. He said he had a book for me to read and went into another room.
“He called me in, and I remember there was a bed up along the wall. He was standing at the side of it, beside the locker, and had a book in his hand.
“When I went over to take it, he grabbed me and shoved me on the bed. He never said anything.”
Ms McCarthy has no recollection of getting home that evening. She thinks the family friend must have driven her. “I didn’t tell anyone about what happened in the parochial house,” she said.
“Who was I going to tell? I just kept it to myself and blocked it out. About two weeks later, I was going to meet a friend in a coffee shop.
“She was going to drive me home that evening, but her car wouldn’t start. She rang her husband and he said he would come and get us.
“For some reason, I decided I was going to hitch a lift home. And off I went.”
Ms McCarthy walked to the main road out of the town and stuck out her thumb.
A car pulled up beside her and to her horror she saw it was the priest.
“I can still see it now,” she said. “I opened the car door and it was him. He told me to get in. I don’t know why, and I have questioned myself over and over every day since, but I got in.”
She said the priest drove about 12 miles down the road and pulled into a car park.
“He parked up so tight against a wall that I couldn’t open the passenger door,” she said.
“He raped me again. And then he turned around and he told me to get out of the car.
“He left me in the middle of nowhere, in the dark. I was hysterical... I had this fear in my mind that my child would be taken off me if I told anyone”
“He left me in the middle of nowhere, in the dark. I was hysterical.” Again, she told no one.
“I had this fear in my mind that my child would be taken off me if I told anyone,” Mary said.
“I just kept it to myself. I pushed it deep inside and tried to get on with it.”
Ms McCarthy gave birth to a baby girl in October 1990. She later married and had three more children.
She is now separated from her husband.
Despite her efforts to put what happened with the priest out of her head, the mental toll was significant.
“There was so much pressure on my mental health,” she said.
“I wore a mask. Anyone who knew me would say I was the life and soul, but inside I was a fragile wreck.
“It impacted my whole life. I had hopes and dreams of going back to college when the children were bigger and that all fell away. I just felt so worthless and humiliated inside.”
Then, 15 years after the attack, Ms McCarthy came face-to-face with the priest at a funeral.
“I was standing at that funeral home door, in the queue, and there he was,” she said.
“It was like a piece of the jigsaw puzzle just fitted into place. I was talking to a woman and he took off.”
She found out where he was living and phoned the house.
“About two weeks after seeing him at the funeral, I was like, ‘I’m going to confront you’ so I rang the number I got for him and I said straight out, ‘You and I need to talk’ – he knew exactly who I was,” she said.
They met in a car park. Ms McCarthy said he offered her a “financial donation” of €20,000 and suggested she spend it on counselling.
“I told him it wasn’t about money,” she said.
“I asked him why he did what he did to me and the answer I got was, ‘The devil took hold of me’.”
She said he rang her the following day and they arranged to meet again.
“He sat in my car and handed me an envelope with €10,000 cash in it,” she said.
“He got me to sign on church-headed paper that I received the money from him.”
She said they met for the final time a week later.
“I didn’t want to, but then I agreed because he said he was going to give me a letter of apology,” she said.
“He tried to give me another €5,000. I threw it back at him and said that it wasn’t about money.”
A few days later, she went to a garda station to report the rapes.
Ms McCarthy claims the initial investigation was “flawed” and that nobody took her mobile phone, which contained all the text messages between her and the priest, and voicemails he’d left for her.
A file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), but no case was brought against the priest.
Mary decided to take a civil case against him; the then Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary; and Joseph Cassidy, who was Archbishop of Tuam from 1987 to 1994.
However, on the morning the case was to start in April 2010, Mary claims she was talked into accepting a settlement of €30,000. Two-thirds of that sum went to her legal team.
It later emerged that the lead detective in the investigation into the priest was himself sued over an alleged rape.
“What does that tell you about how my case was handled?” she said. “I was let down badly.”
Ms McCarthy believes the priest, who was asked to “step away” from all parish duties, is still alive and lives in the west. In a review of the case in 2022, the DPP once again declined to charge the priest, contrary to garda recommendations.
Although she was disappointed with the outcome, Ms McCarthy continued to seek answers from An Garda Síochána.
Last November, she was finally granted a meeting with the new Garda Commissioner, Justin Kelly.
Ms McCarthy claims that during the meeting, Commissioner Kelly admitted she had not been treated as a victim and said what happened to her then would not happen now.
She also claims that the Commissioner apologised to her on behalf of the force.
“It was so important for me to hear that,” she said.
“It had taken such a fight to get to that point. Listening to the words, ‘You were not treated as a victim’, I found that very difficult because I always knew myself that I wasn’t treated as a victim.
“But when you hear it from the top it is very difficult.”
However, she claims that the Commissioner’s office has refused to give her the notes from that meeting or any written acknowledgment of the apology she says she received.
“I’m very upset and disappointed,” she said. “I was pleased when the Commissioner said what he said. But to refuse me the notes and to not put any of it in writing has caused me further pain.”
Ms McCarthy is working with James Brannigan, a retired PSNI detective who set up The Katie Trust in memory of murdered showjumper Katie Simpson.
Mr Brannigan said he felt Ms McCarthy’s request for a written apology was valid.
“There were systemic failings in this case,” he said. “An Garda Síochána can set the record straight now by publicly acknowledging that Mary should have been treated like a victim.
“Mary is unique in the sense that we [usually] only deal with deceased people, but it was harrowing to hear what she went through.
“I believe what has been said to her face-to-face should be formally written to her.”
The Irish Independent contacted the Catholic Church and An Garda Síochána, but neither replied to requests for comment.