GALWAY (IRELAND)
Daily Mail [London, United Kingdom]
July 21, 2024
By Anne Sheridan
[See also the documentary.]
The first known child sex abuse allegation against disgraced Irish Bishop Eamonn Casey went ‘missing’ after it was reported from an Irish diocese to one in England, the Mail can reveal.
The allegation was sent from the Diocese of Limerick in Ireland to the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton in England in June 2001, where he was then working, and also to the Vatican.
The receipt of that complaint and the potential child safeguarding risks that it posed should have seen him suspended from his ministry in England, pending further investigation. The complaint should also have been reported to the police in the UK.
However, neither of those actions were taken and Fr Casey, as he was then known, remained active in ministry in the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton for another four years.
He was only suspended from his position four years later when his own niece, Patricia Donovan, also living in the UK, came forward in 2005 and made a complaint of alleged child sexual abuse dating back to the late 1960s.
Dr Casey moved to the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton in 1998 after Church leaders in both Ireland and the UK were reluctant to accept him back into any parish following the six years he spent in Ecuador.
His time in the missions followed the dramatic fall-out from the revelations in 1992 that he had fathered a son with his distant American cousin Annie Murphy and he was forced to resign as Bishop of Galway.
This failure to take action by the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton against Bishop Casey will feature in a major documentary, Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets, due to air on RTE One, Ireland’s national broadcaster, this Monday night at 9.35pm. The programme is in association with the Irish Mail on Sunday, which first revealed in 2019 that four separate women had made complaints of alleged child sexual abuse against him
When the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton was asked what action, if any, they had taken on foot of the 2001 complaint, a spokeswoman said that they could find no record of that complaint on their files.
A spokeswoman for the Diocese Arundel & Brighton said: ‘Recent communications with RTE and the Diocese of Limerick have established that a member of our Diocese was informed of a safeguarding allegation concerning Bishop Eamon Casey in 2001, four years earlier than we had previously believed.’
‘Had this allegation been made today the police would have been informed immediately. We are deeply disappointed that this course of action does not appear to have been taken in 2001,’ they said.
After being alerted to this earlier allegation by RTE, the diocese said they were committed to undertaking an internal investigation into why no record of this complaint was on their files.
‘We have undertaken a very thorough search of diocesan records. Regrettably, given the passage of time, we have been unable to locate relevant written records or to speak to anyone able to shed light on Limerick Diocese’s communication in 2001,’ they said.
By 2001, when he should have been suspended, Fr Casey, as he was then known, had ministry in the village of Staplefield, in the parish of St Paul’s, Hayward Heath, from 1998 until 2005, under the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton. In Staplefield, he was a curate in an arch-parish, covering three churches, and was also chaplain to a hospital of 320 beds.
Dr Casey was only suspended from ministry when his niece Ms Donovan came forward and reported him to UK police and gardai [Irish police] in 2005 for alleged sexual abuse.
The first known child sexual abuse allegation against Bishop Casey was made in 2001 by another party. That woman, who had also moved later to live in London, claimed that she had been sexually abused on two occasions by Fr Casey during his time as a chaplain to St Joseph’s Reformatory School in Limerick in 1956.
She later took High Court proceedings against Bishop Casey for personal injury damages, alleging that he had committed sexual assaults on her when she was aged 15 in Limerick. Eventually, she was awarded a settlement through the Residential Institutions Redress Board.
The Vatican has now confirmed that it banned Bishop Casey from ministry ‘before 2006’ and that his ban was reiterated to him formally in 2007 after they received multiple child sex abuse complaints against him, including the 2001 complaint and that made by his niece Ms Donovan in 2005.
At least five allegations against Bishop Casey have been made in every Irish diocese where he served – from the 1950s to the 1980s – but he was never charged or prosecuted for any of his alleged crimes and he consistently denied all allegations against him.
A spokesman for Limerick Diocese confirmed: ‘In 2001, Limerick Diocese received the first complaint in relation to Bishop Casey.’
The spokesman confirmed that the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton was informed by them of this complaint on June 7th 2001, and that the Papal Nuncio, responsible for communicating these matters to Rome, and the gardai were also informed.
The spokeswoman for the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton said that when complaint by Ms Donovan, Bishop Casey’s niece, was received in 2005 swift action was then taken by their diocese.
‘As a direct result of that allegation nationally agreed safeguarding protocols were implemented with support offered to the person involved. The allegation was reported to statutory agencies with Bishop Casey immediately removed from public ministry,’ they said.
The Diocese of Arundel & Brighton said they received no other child safeguarding concerns in relation to Fr Casey during his time there.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor was Bishop in Arundel and Brighton when Dr Casey was offered a position there in 1998. Cardinal Murphy O’Connor died in 2017.
However, when the complaint was sent from Limerick, his successor Bishop Kieron Conry was named Bishop of Arundel and Brighton just a month earlier. He was consecrated on 9 June 2001 – two days after Limerick sent the complaint.
A spokeswoman for the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton said: ‘This incident was reported shortly before Bishop Conry was appointed. He has no recollection of the events in question.’
In September 2014, Bishop Conry announced his resignation as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton with immediate effect for having ‘been unfaithful to [his] promises as a Catholic priest’ and bringing ‘shame’ on the diocese and the Church.
He announced his resignation when it became apparent that the Mail on Sunday was about to reveal that he had been having an affair with an adult married woman.
Bishop Conry said his relationship with this woman, whose husband threatened to sue the Church after learning of their relationship from a private detective he had hired, was no more than a close friendship.
However, he admitted that another relationship six years prior had been sexual but would not say how long it had lasted. He said he decided to resign because ‘it was the easiest way to avoid further embarrassment, disappointment… and shame for the church’.
Prior to Bishop Casey’s return from the missions, there had been much debate within the Church in both Ireland and the UK as to what position he would hold and where.
In 1998, a spokesman for Cardinal Basil Hume of the Diocese of Westminster said that there were many reasons it would not be appropriate for Bishop Casey to go to London on his return from South America.
Cardinal Hume’s spokesman said at that time: ‘The Cardinal would always wish to help anyone in need, pastorally, but there are many reasons why it would be inappropriate for Bishop Casey to be in London.’
The reasons why it would have been inappropriate were not detailed.
The Archdiocese of Southwark and the Diocese of Westminster have refused to comment, when asked by RTE, if they have received any allegations against Bishop Casey relating to his time in London as a priest in the 1960s.
Fr Casey was appointed to the Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy Service in England in 1960 and held this position until 1969. He was appointed chaplain to St Ethelbert’s parish in Berkshire in 1960 and became the first chairman of Shelter, the UK housing charity. In 1963, he began working with the Catholic Housing Aid Society, at the invitation of Cardinal Heenan, then Archbishop of Westminster.
His niece Ms Donovan reported her allegations in 2005 to the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton, and to UK police, while Irish detectives also travelled over to the UK to interview her. The Irish Director of Public Prosecutions later directed in August 2006 that no charges be brought against her uncle. She has never received compensation from the Church but the Galway Diocese did pay for counselling for her.