UNITED STATES/IRELAND
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Francis Xavier Markey was ordained in 1952 for the Clogher diocese, Ireland, and was assigned to a parish in Magheracloon, Co Monagahn. He was suspended from there in 1964 and sent to a treatment facility when the first known accusation of child sexual abuse against him emerged. Markey was reassigned after 5 months of treatment to a parish in Threemilehouse, Co Monagahn. He was removed from that parish in 1973 when a report was made to the gardaí (Irish police) that he had sexually abused another child. This time Markey was sent to England for treatment at a facility run by the Servants of the Paraclete. He was allowed to work “under supervision” there in a temporary mission.
In 1981 Markey was sent to the United States for further sex offender treatment at the Servants of the Paraclete’s facility in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. In December 1981 he moved to the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota to receive training toward becoming a substance abuse counselor. While there he was allowed to serve as a fill-in priest at several rural parishes. In June 1981 Markey was removed when parents of one of the parishes complained that the priest was too affectionate with boys. Markey returned to Jemez Springs and became an affiliate of the Servants of the Paraclete (while still officially a priest of the Clogher diocese); he left the Order sometime before September 1985.
Markey’s whereabout in the late 1980s are murky. He is said to have had a stint as a rehabilitation counselor at a Betty Ford Clinic in the 1990s. The Official Catholic Directory places him in 1991-1992 as a chaplain at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Lafayette, Indiana. He settled sometime before or during the 1990s in South Bend, Indiana and worked as a substance abuse counselor in nearby Niles, Michigan from 2001-March 2009.
In June 2006 a man reported to Irish police that Markey raped him on two occasions in 1968, when the man was a 15-year-old boy. In the Spring of 2008 a judge in Ireland issued warrants for Markey’s arrest on each of the two charges. In November 2009 U.S. Marshals arrested Markey at his home in South Bend. He was extradited to Ireland in July 2010. In January 2011 he was accused of the sexual abuse of an 8-year-old Minnesota boy in 1982. A June 2013 lawsuit names Markey as having perpetrated sexual abuse against a 15-year-old rural Minnesota boy and his two brothers 30 years previously.
Markey died in September 2012 in Ireland while awaiting trial.
Ordained: 1952
Died: September 2012
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