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Was there a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice?

There are very strong grounds for an investigation by the Gardaí into the cover-up of the sexual abuse crimes of Fr. Brendan Smyth.

Niall Stokes, 28 May 2012

So what should we do about Cardinal Sean Brady? It would, I think, be judicious to take a very close look at the details of the controversy that have engulfed the Catholic primate over the past fortnight before offering an opinion...

A programme in the This World series, broadcast on BBC Northern Ireland recently, and titled ‘The Shame of the Catholic Church’, contained hugely damning revelations concerning the role of Cardinal Sean Brady in relation to the abuse carried out by the notorious paedophile priest, Fr. Brendan Smyth.

Smyth, who abused over 100 children, had the distinction of bringing down the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition government in 1994 as a result of what the Labour leadership saw as an attempted cover-up of his activities. 

But how deep did that cover-up run? To what extent was he facilitated in continuing his campaign of brutalisation of children by the authorities of the Church and the State? And in relation to that, who was culpable? Well, like peace, the truth comes dropping slow, but it has finally begun to emerge.

The BBC programme told the story of Brendan Boland, a boy from Co. Louth, who had himself been abused by the Norbertine priest. At the age of just 14 years, Brendan took the enormously courageous decision to make an official complaint against Smyth. In the course of pursuing this complaint, he named four other children, younger than him, who were also being abused by the priest, including a boy who lived in Belfast.

There was a desperately poignant moment in the programme when Brendan said to one of the other children, ‘I thought I’d saved you’. He had a right to make that assumption. Because, as a young teenager, Brendan Boland sat before a committee of three priests, including Sean Brady, who was also secretary to the Bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan, at the time. He explained to them what the dysfunctionally predatory Smyth had been up to, and named the other children that were being abused. He had a right to believe that these representatives of God on earth would act on the information provided.



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