Scamdal 5

How we are played, in five easy lessons

5. THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES

                                                                             Smyth

 Brendan Smyth was finally imprisoned by our state in 1997, after more than four decades of child molestation and rape. He was first arrested by the RUC in 1991. He fled south at the first opportunity and his trust in the southern Irish authorities was rewarded at first. Then he became a political problem for them. 

While on the run, Smyth stayed for the longest time at Kilnacrott Abbey in Co. Cavan, which was run by the Norbertine Fathers. He had a history of protection in Cavan, with the Bishop's secretary and canon lawyer Sean Brady going so far in 1975 as to  - while acting in an 'Ecclesiastical Court' composed of two priests according to one of two 14 year old boys Brendan Boland - induce the two boys to take an oath of confidentiality about their abuses by Smyth. Before this, the boys were asked questions such as, ''Did you enjoy it?'', ''Have you ever done this with another man or boy? If not, why not?'','' Did your body change?'' and ''Did seed come from your body?''

A fellow Norbertine Fr. Bruno Mulvihill tried, through church channels, to have action taken against Smyth - to no avail. Mulvihill left the church and died before his time.

The protection of Smyth extended to the office of the Attorney General Harry Whelehan, a senior counsel. Whelehan ludicrously claimed to have been unaware of a request from the North to extradite Smyth. While Smyth eventually chose to go to Belfast and do something less than four years in prison, the government here responded to the growing controversy by making Whelehan a High Court judge and president of all the judges of the High Court. 

It is hard to know if anything would ever have been done to tackle mass child sexual abuse in the South if we were not forced into confronting it by Northern Ireland's police and media. I believe it would have happened anyway, because it was something which needed to happen as part of Ireland's great Nineties makeover in advance of its becoming the world's premier tax haven. 

Either way, it happened and Smyth became one of 82 priests and brothers to be incarcerated (from more than 1,300 who were investigated). It is not clear under what conditions the 82 lived, as all of them were held in the Curragh, purportedly in order to protect them from reprisals from other prisoners. As Arbour Hill was an established prison for sex offenders, this didn't make a lot of sense. And given the extremely close relationship between the Catholic Church and the army, going back to the foundation of the state, the arrangement should be viewed with suspicion.

Tony Walsh is the only one of the 82 to serve a life-altering length of time behind bars and he was moved to a real prison - presumably Arbour Hill - before his scheduled release last year. His long sentence is possibly connected to his having been the only one of the 82 the bishops (Archbishop Desmond Connell) tried to laicise (the Vatican reversed their decision).

Smyth had spent a mere month in the Curragh when he took to dying. He followed this escape from his twelve year sentence by getting buried in the dark at Kilnacrott and having concrete poured over his coffin. As you do.

                                                                         Prunty

Cathal Daly, the Bishop of Down and Connor while Smyth was operating there, may get out of being held responsible on a technicality - Smyth being an order priest. The same cannot be said in relation to Canon James Prunty, who was the Administrator of St. Mary's Parish (i.e. Parish Priest of the most populous parish in the diocese with, if my understanding is correct, additional financial obligations to the Bishop) in Athlone while Daly was the Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise. Prunty probably held the highest church rank among the Curragh 82 (though Ivan Payne was President of the Canon Law Association of Great Britain and Ireland and a couple of others were school presidents) and his case therefore deserves close scrutiny. 

Prunty was well known in Athlone as a serial molester of prepubescent boys and girls and less well known as provider of a (probably small) number of boys to a college in Longford for the purposes of rape. Interestingly, Brendan Smyth also drove boys from Belfast to the North Midlands for the same reason around the same time - though only for his own use, far away from prying Presbyterian eyes. When knowledge of Prunty's activities around Athlone became difficult to suppress, Daly moved him more than 50 miles north to the remote parish of Aughavas-Cloone in 1975, which still happened to put him closer to Longford.

Judge Anthony Kennedy, a senior counsel, sentenced Prunty at Tullamore District Court to 12 months in the Curragh in 2002. He would do less than nine. Prunty was himself represented by a senior counsel. I don't know who represented the State, but whenever senior counsel converge, especially in an unlikely setting, it is almost certain that a powerful special interest is being looked after. Also raising suspicion is the fact that the hearing was held in camera, something which - unlike with the Carney case below - could not be justified as the abused children were then adults. 

The newspaper reports of the hearing are practically identical, essentially parroting a press release which surely originated with the barristers. It seems likely that Prunty's prosecution was kept secret from the press, which then received the copy once the hearing had concluded. The Mirror went front page with the story.

A solicitor representing the then Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise was told to leave the court - which was a nice touch as his or her presence in the first place was pointless. As appears to have been common in these cases, there was only one witness for the prosecution, purportedly speaking on behalf of the three women (how does that work?). On the other side, there were three character witnesses for Prunty. It appears that the barristers pulled a MacArthur on four other accusers (all female) and entered a nolle prosegui (dropping the charges) on their behalf. Were they consulted about this? Did they even know the hearing was happening?

What is certain is that the number of Garda-reported complaints against Prunty from the Seventies would have been a multiple of those from the Fifties. Regardless of the seriousness of the assaults, he would never have been prosecuted on the basis of 45 year old evidence alone. That can only have happened as part of a trade-off. And the important trade was to have all of his recorded crimes come from a time long before he had any significant connection to Bishop/Cardinal Daly. 

Needless to say, Daly was never investigated for any of this. His career went from strength to strength, something that is not unusual for those who know where the bodies are buried. In 1990 he became a Cardinal and Primate of All Ireland. When he retired from that post six years later, he handed over the mitre to none other than Sean Brady, the ''Did you enjoy it?'' guy.

                                                          

                                                                                         * 

The job of whittling down most than 1,300 accused to a manageable 82 involved a filtering process through commissions of inquiry. These state-funded pseudo courts were headed by judges - all of them barristers - such as Mary Laffoy, Francis Murphy, Yvonne Murphy and Sean Ryan. They walked the lines between exposure and containment, justice and utility. Michael O'Brien, the man in the video below, did not ask his pre-approved question to the panel of RTE's Questions and Answers and instead spoke of having seven barristers set on him by the Laffoy Commission. Coincidentally or not, the programme was cancelled (after 23 years on air) a few weeks later.   

In 2015 the barristers shut down an attempt by three Northerners to target two of the bishops (Brady and the unimplicated Leo O'Reilly) for compensation, on the probably reasonable grounds that they had already successfully sued in the North. This however did not prevent others from suing the bishops - which, as far as I'm aware, has never been allowed to happen except in quickly and quietly settled cases involving Eamonn Casey and Brady again (versus Brendan Boland). The latter cases had to be prosecuted given the weight of public expectation, and the Irish establishment was keen at the time to have the public believe that it was on the side of the abused innocent. But we still await the first Church handover of a sex abuser who was not already well known to the public.

                                                                              Carney

In 1983, the year of Malcolm MacArthur's five minute GUBU murder trial, the father of two altar boys did not do the usual thing and report their abuses to the Church. He went straight to the Gardai and reported Fr William Carney to a young Garda called Finbar Garland. Garland was disgusted by what he heard and his superior Sergeant Kiernan did not discourage him from taking action. Garland quickly contacted the parents of around 16 boys, before they could be got at. It is perhaps more accurate to say that Garland acted quickly before HE could be got at. 

It seems that at least one of the parents tipped off Carney or the parish priest Fr O Saorai. A couple of days after the original complaint was made, the two priests arrived at the Garda station but found the Gardai to be professional, not bendable. A file was sent to the DPP in August, and the office had little option but to prosecute as there was no 'time delay' (an oft used excuse for not prosecuting child sex abusers) due to the excellent police work.

A little earlier, two sets of parents went to O Saorai about boys who had been abused by Carney in a swimming pool. He was reluctant to act [The Murphy Report makes the admission, without explication, that ''it must be said that if (O Saorai) had reported when he should have, it is unlikely that there would have been a criminal prosecution of Fr Carney'']. The parents then wrote to the Archbishop, asking him to remove Carney from their parish ''but not into another parish where he can continue his actions''. One set of the parents also went to the Gardai, though the mother said she had reason to feel afraid since making the original report. 

Meanwhile, Garda Chief Superintendent Maurice O'Connor had contacted Bishop James Kavanagh, an Oxbridge graduate and a professor. O'Connor told the bishop that it was unlikely that charges would be brought against Carney.  O'Connor reported that Kavanagh came to talk to him one or twice a month at his office in Whitehall Garda Station. The Archdiocese had in its possession a copy of the report Superintendent Byrne (from Garland's station) had sent to the DPP.

An internal church investigation led by Monsignor Alex Stenson (in later years described in the Irish Independent as Cardinal Connell's right hand man) recommended in November that ''Fr Carney should be given immediate legal advice. Should the DPP proceed might it be advisable to have Fr C out of the jurisdiction? Fr C has many friends and the question of financing his legal expenses should be considered. It would be a pity if we were seen to be apparently 'washing our hands' in this regard''. 

Also in November, the DPP instructed that Carney be prosecuted in a District Court for his abuses of six boys. Carney was expected to plead not guilty, but that would have made a bigger issue of the accusations and probably would have put it beyond containment in a district court. 

O'Connor assured Bishop Kavanagh that the case would be held in camera. Stenson wrote in 1991 that ''to avoid publicity the Court case was moved from Howth to Sutton Golf Club'' and ''B Kavanagh did a lot to ensure the matter was kept low key and may have been instrumental in having the court case moved ...'' The case was actually held in December in Suttonians Rugby Club and this was apparently not an unusual venue to use. Again, there was only one witness for the prosecution - one of the boys' mothers. The Murphy Report does not name the judge, nor any of the participating barristers. It would be unthinkable for barristers not to be all over such a potentially momentous case. Carney's solicitor gets a particularly hard time in the report, though he is also unnamed. 

The judge played a typical barrister trick on the courtroom. He announced that he was finished for the day and had the court cleared. Then he came back, but only after the press (which is entitled to attend an in camera case) had gone home. They printed nothing and, given their general record over the years, it is doubtful that they would have done if in attendance.

As with Prunty, the charges involving Carney's abuse of four others were mysteriously withdrawn and Carney followed legal advice in pleading guilty to indecently assaulting the two altar boys.  For this he was given probation, with the judge mentioning that he was getting psychiatric treatment. The Murphy Report strongly suggests that Carney's solicitor lied about the treatment in a statement - also suggesting that this statement gave a slither of justifiability to the judge's decision. Why the solicitor rather than counsel made the statement is not explained. 

Carney himself wanted to celebrate the decision, but he was persuaded (after defying orders from Bishops Kavanagh and Ryan to keep away from certain areas) to keep a low profile for a while and check into St. Patrick's Hospital in January for two months to support the alcoholic/psychiatric narrative. On checking out, he immediately went back to swimming with children, working with boy scouts and befriending boys and girls without father figures. The church authorities went through the motions of bringing Carney under control, but he always found himself free to do whatever he wished. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that they secretly admired his ability to do brazenly - his persona was one of a devil-may-care foul mouthed drinker/golfer - what other priests had to do furtively.

The Murphy Report makes no comment on the state's abject failure to implement the terms of probation. The health authorities come in for some minor criticism, mostly suggesting naivete, but it is really all about the Church. It is almost certain that the Church authorities never lost confidence that they could control the courts in the same way they controlled the media and, in the main, the Gardai [Garland was later promoted to Detective Inspector and made head of the Stolen Motor Vehicle Unit - an important area of crime but distinctly blue collar]. 

What the Church feared was what every power fears - ordinary people educating each other about what was going on and bringing their deference to an end. When a parent of one of the boys complained of not being informed about what was happening nine months after the court case, Stenson wrote to Ryan, saying he was not happy with the parent setting himself up as ''a moral watchdog on this priest's future activities and appointments''.

In 1992 the Church finally dismissed Carney from the priesthood; the Bishop Casey scandal was brewing and the bell tolling on its ability to cover everything up forever. Carney got a lump sum of £30,000 from the Archdiocese. Though there were civil cases, the Murphy report states that, ''There was no further prosecution mainly because the DPP took the view that the delay in making the complaints was too great''. Paul Dwyer, who had been raped by Carney at the age of 13, was one of the boys who, 21 years after the fact, found the courage to go to the Gardai. A couple of weeks after the DPP put an end to his case, Dwyer killed himself.

Carney worked as a taxi driver in Dublin for a while, then left for England and eventually settled in Scotland. There he lived for more than a decade running a guest house, getting married and taking annual holidays in the Canary Islands. The Irish authorities knew all of this but took no action to warn anyone.

The DPP changed tack in 2013, after a non-barrister took over the office. Carney was extradited from the UK in relation to the sexual abuse of eight males and three females between 1969 and 1989. He was imprisoned in Portlaoise but never made it to trial. A heart attack did him in, just as it had done Smyth. The six years of post trial abuses would have caused major embarrassment for legal and law enforcement authorities here. The conduct of that December 1983 rugby club trial would have had to come under the microscope. 

And that is why you have probably never heard of William Carney.

                                                                *****

Another GUBU moment for the ages appears in the Murphy Report. Carney had made enquiries to the Eastern Health Board in the late Seventies about fostering children. He also discussed the idea with Archbishop Ryan, who was not in favour, and with Bishop Kavanagh, who (Carney claimed) thought the idea ''good and sound''. Carney wrote to Ryan about his having had lunch with the Minister for Health Michael Woods, claiming that Woods told him that ''as far as he knew there would be no difficulty from the Eastern Health Board''. Woods told the commission that ''he has no recollection of meeting Fr Carney''. Carney later wrote to Woods, following up on previous discussions with claims to have a ''housemother'' available and of his parish priest being ''in full support''.

As with everything Carney related, this episode got little or no mention in the media. The media's tardiness in this regard is unforgivable in light of Woods's solo deal (it was never put to cabinet for approval) with 18 religious orders, limiting their compensation liability to the sexually abused to E128 million - which was less than 10% of the total liability. Taxpayers, including many of the sexually abused who did not claim, picked up the 90% and at least 30% of that went to lawyers.