Brendan Smyth: Victim of Sicko Priest Tortured by Not Knowing Where He Stashed Naked Pictures He Took of Her

By Rhian Lubin
Irish Mirror
June 23, 2015

http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/crime/brendan-smyth-victim-sicko-priest-5936178

Paedophile priest Brendan Smyth is led from the Four Courts in Dublin after being sentenced to 12 years in July 1997

A tormented victim of evil Brendan Smyth told how she is tortured by not knowing where the sicko stashed naked pictures he took of her.

Speaking for the first time under her real name, Loreto said the former priest “will never be dead to me”.

Recalling the sick abuse at the hands of Smyth, she detailed how he “raped, abused and humiliated” while at boarding school.

She told the Pat Kenny Show: “I don’t know where those photographs are that Smyth took of my body.

“Where are they? Who has seen them? Are they published? All those things will always stay, that continues the abuse. There are no answers.”

Loreto told how she felt her life had ended and it became a “case of existing” and managing from day-to-day.

She said: “I knew it was going to happen again, I just didn’t know when. It was always in the boarding school.

“He raped, abused, he took pictures, he humilated. He took my life and every time it happened another part of me died that I didn’t even know was there.”

Loreto, from Co Cavan , told how she only began to remember the abuse after 1996 and the aftermath left her suicidal.

She said: “My life turned upside down. I had a partner Patsy who was fantastic, I had two children, I had it all... and then when I started to remember one particular evening while I was in work, there was nothing.

Father Brendan Smyth

“I would say I was actively suicidal for at least two years. I was reliving it all.”

Loreto was so haunted by Smyth even after he died that she had to go to his grave to see for herself he was really dead.

She said: “There were times when I was in the car driving and I was looking for a brick wall, because I could see Brendan Smyth trying to get in through the windscreen at me. I had the Samaritans number on quick dial on my phone.

“I actually went down to his grave to see that he was dead, because the physical pain I felt in the flashback was so bloody real.

“He’ll never be dead, when you’ve s**t like this going on on television.

“It’s more real. It’s always, always going to be there.

"You learn to park it, and it doesn’t define who I am, it’s just part of what happened to me.”

The twisted priest was ordained in 1951 and Loreto said she wasn’t surprised his superiors protected him.

She added: “I’m not surprised... I’m heartbroken to think that not only me but hundreds of other kids could have been saved the abuse.

“We can’t change that now. But to think it could have been prevented. I wonder today are children actually safe."

An inquiry heard how the child molester told a doctor he could have abused between 50 and 100 children and the number “could even be doubled or perhaps even more”.