RTÉ to broadcast documentary on "sexual predator" Bishop Eamonn Casey tonight

A new documentary on Eamonn Casey - the former Bishop of Galway described as “a sexual predator” - is set to broadcast this evening on RTÉ One.

In the investigation conducted by the national broadcaster alongside the Irish Mail on Sunday, reporter Anne Sheridan looks at the Catholic Church’s handling of allegations against Casey, who died in 2017.

The programme, titled Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets, features interviews with his niece Patricia Donovan, who claims that she suffered sexual abuse from her uncle when she was five-years-old, and that it continued for a number of years.

“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,” says Donovan in the documentary. “And it just carried on in that vein… He had no fear of being caught. He thought he could do what he liked, when he liked, how he liked…”

Ian Elliott, former CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Irish Catholic Church, says Donovan’s claims are “entirely credible”, describing Bishop Casey as “an offender, a sexual predator.”

In 2019, the Galway Diocese informed Sheridan that it received just one allegation of child sexual abuse against Bishop Casey. It has since confirmed that it actually had records of “five people who had complained of childhood sexual abuse against Bishop Casey.”

Bishop Casey denied all the allegations of child sexual abuse made against him. Although all the complaints were reported to An Garda Síochána, he was never charged with, or prosecuted for, any sexual crimes.

Bishop Casey's Buried Secrets airs tonight at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and is available worldwide on the RTÉ Player