BELFAST (UNITED KINGDOM)
Belfast Telegraph [Belfast, Northern Ireland]
September 24, 2022
By Paul Higgins
ONE of Northern Ireland’s most notorious paedophile priests has admitted yet another breach of his life-long sexual offences prevention order.
A court has been told the case of Daniel Gerard Curran “is to proceed by way of a guilty plea” to the single charge against him.
In August this year, the creep breached his lifelong SOPO by ‘loitering’ around Tollymore National Outdoor Centre in Newcastle.
A prosecution lawyer said Curran had walked into the activity centre “with a box of books for dissemination”.
But staff recognised him as the infamous child abuser he is and reported him to the cops.
At the hearing in Downpatrick on Thursday, the judge said she was “familiar with this defendant” and his “lengthy record”.
“He knew very well that he wasn’t supposed to go near the centre,” said Amanda Brady who added “I’m not dealing with this” without a pre-sentence report.
Curran, from Bryansford Avenue in Newcastle, didn’t appear in court but by video link from his solicitor’s office. The case was adjourned until November with Curran told to “co-operate fully” with probation.
The last time the disgraced priest was at court was back in September 2018. He smiled as he walked free after being handed a 200-hour community service order for sexually abusing a boy more than 20 years ago.
Then, he was facing sex abuse charges for the sixth time, and the judge didn’t hold back, saying his offending was a “gross breach of position and trust”.
At an earlier hearing Curran pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a male child in January 1991.
He was the parish priest for St Paul’s in West Belfast at the time.
The court was told he followed a similar pattern to previous offending — taking his victim who was then just 12 and two other boys — to his family cottage in Tyrella, Co Down.
There, Curran gave the victim a “glass of whiskey” and they all slept in one double bed “with their clothes on”.
But when the 12-year-old boy got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and returned, a naked Curran was waiting for him.
The victim recalled how he froze and that the abuse “seemed to go on for ages”. The assault was reported to police in 2015 and when questioned Curran told cops he was a “hopeless alcoholic” at the time and couldn’t specifically remember the boy being at the cottage.
However, the pervert did admit that he had the “deepest regrets” for the sexual activity that he “indulged in at that time”.
The pervert also had convictions for his sick crimes in 77, 82, 86, 88, 90 and 91.