Newbury Today
June 26, 2009
http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=10394
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Church spokesman says the man convicted of sex offences is being closely monitored after being released from prison
A RETIRED priest, jailed for sexually abusing young girls over a 25-year period, is back in Newbury and editing his order’s national newsletter.
Father Patrick McDonagh was handed a four-year jail term in December 2007.
However, the judge suspended all but 18 months of the sentence after a colleague of the priest said he would be under “strict instructions” to undergo therapy and have no contact with children.
On Wednesday a spokesman for the Salvatorian order said that this amounted to Father Patrick making regular telephone calls to a superior in Bristol and informal monitoring by retired colleagues.
In an account of the Irish court proceedings, our sister paper, the Newbury Weekly News, previously reported how the priest, then aged 79, admitted eight counts of sexual and indecent assault on four girls.
He asked for six other offences to be taken into consideration.
All the offences involved girls aged between six and 10 years and were committed over a 25-year period from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s – none of them in Newbury.
Melanie Greally, prosecuting, told the Circuit Criminal Court that some of the offences happened when Father McDonagh visited their families for long weekends.
He asked one of his victims to get into bed with him before a sexual assault took place.
On another occasion he sat a girl on his lap before assaulting her, the court heard.
When arrested in 2006, Father McDonagh acknowledged he had abused his position, but denied any sexual motivation, the judge was told.
The court then heard from Father Alec McAllister, the Bristol-based Vicar Provincial of the Catholic Salvatorian order, who said that Father Patrick would remain under the care of the order for “child protection purposes” and was “under strict instructions” to receive counselling and to have no contact with children.
Judge Patrick McCartan said he was suspending all but 18 months of the four-year jail term on condition Father Patrick complied with the conditions imposed on him by his order.
Father Patrick has now returned to the private Newbury retirement home for priests where he had been living before his arrest.
He edited the latest edition of his order’s national newsletter, the Salvatorian Notebook, in May.
Father Alex declined to comment yesterday but referred calls to Salvatorian spokesman Barry Hudd, who said: “He is on a very, very short lead – not because of any risk but because that’s the way the Catholic Church does things these days.
“He is not allowed to have contact with children or their families.”
Mr Hudd said that Father Patrick had undergone voluntary therapy, told colleagues when he was leaving the home and was monitored weekly by telephone by Father Alex.
He added: “It has to be done on his word at the end of the day but he remains on the (Sexual Offenders’) Register.”
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