IRELAND
Irish Times
Conor Lally
The convicted paedophile Eamon Cooke helped a woman to launch a campaign against the Catholic Church seeking compensation over clerical child sex abuse while he himself was abusing children.
The Irish Times understands Cooke then used his relationship with the woman, without her knowledge, to get access to children so he could abuse them.
The woman was abused for years as a child and Cooke befriended her and assisted her campaign for justice when she believed the church had promised to assist her but then failed to do so.
Cooke died earlier this month after being linked by a witness to the disappearance, presumed murder, of Dublin schoolboy Philip Cairns, who went missing in 1986.
Gardaí have identified a number of sites that may be searched in a bid to find the remains of the boy, who was 13 when he disappeared. One of the sites is in Co Sligo at a house Cooke was linked to, and there are at least four other sites in south Dublin and north Wicklow.
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