NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
By Claire Regan
27 October 2005
Allegations of sexual abuse were made against paedophile priest Sean Fortune within months of his arrival in Belfast and were the reason he was removed from the city in less than a year, one of his victims said last night.
Damien McAleenan, who met the paedophile priest when he served in the Holy Rosary Parish in south Belfast from 1979-80, said he believes the Catholic Church's handling of the situation allowed the pervert to move on to claim more victims.
The 39-year-old spoke out after the release of a damning report which revealed the full horror of brutal clerical child abuse in the Diocese of Ferns in Co Wexford.
Fortune, who commited suicide in 1999 while facing sex abuse charges, was at the centre of the shattering Ferns Inquiry Report into the actions of pervert priests in the diocese over 40 years.
Former Supreme Court Judge Frank Murphy's report found that the church lied, deceived and covered-up to protect 21 priests who had faced over 100 allegations of child sexual abuse - 40 of them made against Fortune.