IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
By Anita Guidera
06 August 2005
An Irish priest who has successfully challenged extradition proceedings against him in the USA to face child sex abuse charges is protesting his innocence - but he has admitted that his life as a priest is over.
Fr Pat Colleary (55), a native of the village of Curry in Co Sligo, was facing two counts of sexual conduct with a minor and one count of attempted sexual conduct with a 10-year-old altar boy in Phoenix, Arizona, where he had worked as a priest since his ordination in 1974.
Colleary returned to Ireland in January, 2003, on legal advice after a warrant had been issued for his arrest by the Maricopa County Attorney's office and later became the subject of extradition proceedings.
But last week he won a High Court case in which he challenged those proceedings on the grounds of the time delay in reporting the alleged offence and the bail regime in Arizona which the High Court ruled would amount to an infringement of his constitutional right to liberty.
Speaking to the Sligo Champion newspaper from his rural south Sligo home near the Mayo border, Colleary praised the local community which had supported him throughout what he described as "a surreal ordeal".