IRELAND
The Journal
BARNARDOS CEO FERGUS Finlay has revealed that he is a survivor of child abuse.
Finlay, a long-standing advocate of the rights of children, said that he had been both sexually and physically abused while a child in the early Sixties.
He was commenting amid ongoing controversy over the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady’s role in interviewing a victim of paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth during the 1970s.
Speaking on Newstalk’s The Right Hook, Finlay rejected the suggestion that Brady might have been prevented from acting on his knowledge of the abuse allegations because a different culture existed in Ireland when the interview took place.
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