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	Diocese Admits It Failed Victim of Abuse Irish Independent April 20, 2006 http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1600505&issue_id=13935 THE Diocese of Limerick last night admitted it did not do enough to prevent the sexual abuse of former altar boy Peter McCloskey but did "everything possible" afterwards to help him recover from his horrific ordeal. The father of three tragically took his own life on April 1 just days after meeting with diocesan officials to discuss the terms of a compensation package with the Catholic Church. The 37-year-old was brutally raped by a substitute priest, Fr Denis Daly, when he was just 10 years old and serving as an altar boy in Caherdavin in 1980/81. Moral It has now emerged that the Co Clare-born priest, who spent 30 years in Australia before returning to Ireland in the 1980s, had come to the attention of Australian police and is on record by the Diocese of Sydney for "a moral lapse". Despite this, it appears that the then Bishop of Limerick, Dr Jeremiah Newman, never carried out a background check on Fr Daly before allowing him to work in the parish as a substitute priest for four years even though another Irish diocese had rejected Fr Daly's bid for a position around the same time after checking him out with the Sydney Diocese. It also emerged that two priests serving the Limerick Diocese were aware of another child sex abuse allegation against Fr Daly involving a young boy in the Janesboro area of Limerick in the 1980s but they did nothing except to advise the boy's father to contact the gardai. Last night, the Diocese admitted church officials at the time were lax in not reporting the allegations to the Diocese or the gardai nor checking out Fr Daly's background. "It would have been prudent to report it," a diocesan spokesman said of the allegations.
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