Coventry Priest Alexander Bede Walsh Found Guilty of Child Sex Abuse
By Martin Bagot
A PRIEST who worked in Coventry and Warwickshire has been found guilty of 18 charges of indecent assault. After a 10-day trial Alexander Bede Walsh, 58, was found guilty of the charges plus another serious sexual offence at Stoke Crown Court late yesterday. It took around six hours to find him guilty of the 19 charges. Walsh, of Church Lane, Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire, had denied a total of 27 counts. He worked at Father Hudson Orphanage in Coleshill and All Souls Church in Chapelfields, Coventry. A jury of seven women and five men is still considering four further counts against Walsh and will resume its deliberations today. The jury also acquitted the Catholic clergyman of three counts of indecent assault and one of indecency with a child. Ordained in 1979, Walsh has served parishes in Coventry, Staffordshire and Warwickshire. Throughout the trial he insisted he had never sexually abused or inappropriately touched any of the complainants. Under cross-examination Walsh had insisted he was the victim in the case and complainants were motivated by the idea of compensation. The prosecution told the court the victims were subjected to "serial, predatory" abuse. He trained at the Father Hudson orphanage, in Coleshill, in the mid-1970s, and was priest at All Souls Church, in Chapelfields, between 1982 and 1985. Six of the alleged victims were pupils at All Souls School, which is linked to the church. Some told the court they suffered abuse during trips to a swimming pool at another school in Coventry. Walsh was arrested and interviewed in 2006 after two men contacted the police to claim they had been abused in the city when they were children. Further complainants came forward between 2008 and 2011. Three of the four counts which remain to be considered today relate to an eighth alleged victim.
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