A victim of vile paedophile priest Bill Carney says he has been robbed of justice after the former cleric was found dead in his cell.

Carney was found lifeless in his prison cell at the Midlands Prison on Saturday morning, after his cellmate raised the alarm.

Prison staff rushed the 65-year-old to the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The former cleric had been suffering from a heart condition for years, which prevented him from appearing in court since his extradition from Scotland in 2013.

He was extradited back to Ireland to face 34 charges of indecent assault on eight males and two females and was due in court in January next year.

But after he was found dead at the weekend, one of male victims told this paper: “How will we ever get closure now?”

The victim, who wants to remain anonymous, revealed how vile Carney used to take him out of school in Dublin when he was just 10 years old to abuse him.

And reacting to the news that he had died in his prison cell, he fumed: “I’m glad he’s dead but we’ve been robbed of justice.

“How will we ever get justice now? I’m in complete shock.

“We wanted to get him into court, to see him punished for what he did to us, I wanted to look him in the face and see if there was any regret over what he did to me but we’ll never get that now.

“I can move on and I’ll get on with my life like I have been doing but this means I’ll never get closure.”

The victim revealed how the vile abuse Carney subjected him to had affected him “every day of his life” in the almost 40 years since.

He added: “I’m very strict with my kids, I’m very protective. He stole my childhood and now we’ve been robbed of justice too.”

Carney was ordained for the Archdiocese of Dublin in 1974 and was defrocked in 1992.

He is thought to have abused dozens of children in his early years as a priest,

The 2009 Murphy report shockingly revealed that he showed an unhealthy interest in young boys from the moment he was ordained.

He first asked the Archdiocese to be transferred from his convent to be closer to schoolboys he was teaching, and also attempted to foster children.

As a student priest, he would take children from orphanages and industrial schools for outings.

As the years passed, he became more and more involved in children’s homes, and social workers started expressing concerns about his behaviour in the early 1970s.

It is believed that the Church was aware of these suspicions but did not act on them.

And it wasn’t until 1983 that altar boys complained to gardai about the sex beast and while he pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault, he was allowed to stay on as a priest and was even given another parish.

Carney is thought to have molested boys and girls from at least eight different homes.

The Murphy report found complaints or suspicions of child sexual abuse against him in respect of at least 32 individuals.

He refused to leave his parish until he was given a £30,000 pay-off when he was kicked out of the priesthood.

He used the money to create a new life for himself in St Andrews, Scotland with a wife who knew nothing of his horrific crimes.

But he was exposed by our sister paper, the Daily Record in 2013 and he was extradited back to Ireland.