IRELAND
The Argus
Anne Campbell
PUBLISHED
04/07/2015
A Dundalk man abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth says the former cardinal’s latest apology to victims is ‘weak and feeble’ and barriers are still being put up against victims by the Catholic Church.
Brendan Boland, from Marian Park, was a victim of Ireland’s most notorious child abuser but bravely spoke out about what happened to him in the early 1970s. However, the then Father Sean Brady was one of the clerics involved in swearing Mr Boland, and another teen, to silence when the victims gave evidence to an investigative panel of priests at the Friary in 1975. Smyth continued to abuse children until he was jailed in 1994.
On Thursday last, the former All-Ireland primate Sean Brady told the North’s Historical Abuse Inquiry that ‘there was a shroud of secrecy and confidentiality with a view not to destroying the good name of the church’ and Smyth had committed ‘unspeakable’ crimes.
The Cardinal said: ‘The scandal that somebody who was ordained to serve people should so abuse the trust for their own pleasure was appalling and it was. To offset that, the scandal was kept a secret – very, very secret. Everybody involved would be bound to secrecy too’.
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