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	Garda Failed to Investigate Priest's Child-Porn Photography Ireland Online November 26, 2009 http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/ireland/garda-failed-to-investigate-priests-childporn-photography-435917.html An abusive priest known as Fr Edmondus was not investigated by gardaí despite the opportunity for photographic evidence after attacks on sick children in hospital. Victim Marie Collins told the Commission: "A man like that deserves our prayers but not our protection." Ordained in 1957, he abused several young people when chaplain in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A photography firm in the UK raised concerns over Fr Edmondus after receiving a roll of 26 images of girls aged 10 and 11 in sexual poses. Scotland Yard was called in and told Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan, but there is no evidence of a garda investigation. The inquiry found the commissioner asked Archbishop John Charles McQuaid to take the case, claiming gardaí "could prove nothing". There is no record of the roll of film. The priest's excuse was curiosity and the Church's action was to get a doctor, "a good Catholic to instruct him and thus end the wonderment". The children were never located and no protocols were put in place to prevent another priest abusing his position in the hospital. The report said: "The Commission believes that Archbishop McQuaid acted as he did to avoid scandal in both Ireland and Rome and without regard to the protection of children in Crumlin hospital." Ms Collins told the Commission she was photographed by Fr Edmondus at Crumlin in 1960, aged 13. In 1985 she told her local curate. He did not ask for the priest's name and revealed clergy were told in college not to ask for names. Ms Collins wrote to Cardinal Desmond Connell in 1995 about the abuse but he never replied, simply tasking a monsignor to look after the allegation. In a meeting with the monsignor, the Commission revealed Fr Edmondus said: "He had no problem with little boys but 'if he had a problem, it was with little girls'." A priest who supported Ms Collins through the late 1990s, Fr James Norman, described Cardinal Connell as someone who cared but "had not got a clue" how to tackle the problem. "Archbishop McQuaid's conclusion that Fr Edmondus's actions arose merely from a wonderment about the female anatomy is risible," the Commission said. In the 1970s in Wicklow Fr Edmondus targeted a nine-year-old. Twenty years after that suspicions about his behaviour in a north Dublin parish saw him investigated. The Commission reported that youth workers in the parish said "everyone knew about Fr Edmondus". It found he allowed young girls to change in his house before swimming and he photographed them. Fr Edmondus was charged in 1997. He pleaded guilty to offences against Ms Collins and a girl in Wicklow. He was jailed for nine months and defrocked by the Church.
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