THE LIMERICK Catholic Diocese paid €100,000 to an unidentified alleged victim of child sexual abuse by the late former Limerick-based priest and Bishop of Galway, Eamonn Casey.
The compensation was one of a number of explosive revelations in an RTÉ/Irish Mail on Sunday television documentary by former Limerick-based reporter Anne Sheridan, broadcast this past Monday.
Alleged paedophile Casey was born in Kerry but grew up in Adare, County Limerick, and went to school in St Munchins College, Corbally.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Casey’s niece, Patricia Donovan, alleged he sexually abused her for a number of years from when she was aged just five years old.
“Some of the things he did to me, and where he did them…the horror of being raped by him when I was five, the violence…and it just carried on in that vein,” Ms Donovan told documentary makers.
Ms Donovan said Casey “had no fear of being caught” and that “he thought he could do what he liked, when he liked, how he liked”.
“He was almost incensed that I would dare fight against him, that I would dare try and hurt him, I would dare try and stop him… It didn’t make any difference.”
Ms Donovan, now in her 60s, reported the abuse claims in 2005, but Casey – who was forced to resign as Bishop of Galway in 1992 when his affair with Annie Murphy, in which he fathered a child, came to light – was never charged with or convicted of any sexual offence.
Despite her abuse claims, Ms Donovan has not received any compensation from the Church, however the Galway Diocese did pay for physiological counselling on her behalf.
The explosive documentary, ‘Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets‘, highlighted a total of eight allegations of child and adult sexual assaults and child safeguarding concerns against Casey.
The former chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland, Ian Elliott, said that in his opinion, Casey, who died aged 89, was “a sexual predator” and he viewed Patricia Donovan’s claims as “entirely credible”.
In 2019, the Galway Diocese, where Casey was bishop from 1976 to 1992, told reporter Anne Sheridan that it had received just one allegation of child sexual abuse against him.
Galway has since confirmed it had records at that time of “five people who had complained of childhood sexual abuse against Bishop Casey” relating to alleged events in every Irish diocese where Casey worked — Limerick, Galway, and Kerry.
The first known allegation of paedophilia against Casey was made in 2001 by an unidentified woman who claimed that she had been sexually abused on two occasions by Casey during his time as a chaplain to St Joseph’s Reformatory School in Limerick in 1956.
This woman later took High Court proceedings against Casey for personal injury damages.
She was eventually awarded a financial settlement through the Residential Institutions Redress Board.
The documentary also revealed that the Vatican confirmed it had banned Bishop Casey from ministry “before 2006”, and that his ban was reiterated to him formally in 2007 after they received multiple child sex abuse complaints against him, including the 2001 complaint as well as the complaint by Ms Donovan in 2005.
A spokesman for Limerick Diocese told Ms Sheridan that it received the first complaint about Casey in 2001.
However, despite the Limerick Diocesan Office passing on Ms Donovan’s complaint to the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, where Casey was serving, Casey – who should have then been suspended, remained active in ministry for a further four years because the complaint went missing.
A statement provided to the documentary by the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton read: “Had this allegation been made today, the police would have been informed immediately. We are deeply disappointed that this course of action does not appear to have been taken in 2001.”
The current Bishop of Limerick, Dr Brendan Leahy, who has access to documents relating to complaints against Casey made in the Limerick diocese, said: “I express deep sorrow and regret to anyone who has been wounded by clerical abuse, including the people referred to in this documentary.”
“They deserve our respect, belief, and support. Without commenting on any specific allegation, I have no reason to disbelieve any of the allegations made.”
Casey, who died in 2017 aged 89, vehemently denied all of the allegations of sexual abuse.
