IRELAND
Irish Independent
Ralph Riegel
PUBLISHED
25/04/2015
A PRIEST sexually assaulted a seven-year-old girl during her First Confession and then gave her absolution when he was finished.
Fr John Calnan (76) was jailed for two years for abusing the shocked girl in “a small sweaty kitchenette” of a west Cork school in the 1980s.
Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard Calnan, who stopped working as a priest in 1992 after other abuse allegations, pushed his hand under the girl’s dress and inside her underwear.
Calnan of The Presbytery, Paul Street, Cork has multiple previous convictions for indecent assault against both young girls and boys.
He was also convicted of attempted rape of a young girl before the Central Criminal Court in 2012.
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