GARDAÍ IN Cork have resubmitted eight files to the Director of Public Prosecutions relating to complaints by seven women and a man that they were sexually assaulted as children by a priest in the Diocese of Cloyne.
The complaints against the now elderly cleric in the new combined file allege that he sexually assaulted the women and the man when they were teenagers at locations in north and mid-Cork in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Seven of the eight files had already been submitted to the DPP who decided against a prosecution of the cleric, who is now in his early 70s, but gardaí have since resubmitted the seven files along with an eighth file where a decision is still pending.
The priest, who was identified by Ian Elliott, the chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, as Fr B, has been interviewed by gardaí in relation to each of the complaints and has denied that he ever abused any of the complainants.
However, gardaí, in their combined file which was was resubmitted to the DPP earlier this month, have pointed out the similarities in terms of the complaints made by the women with regard to opportunity and the type of sexual assault that they allege he perpetrated on them.
It is understood gardaí have pointed to what they believe is a pattern of behaviour by the priest who would have come in contact with the women when they were as young as 14 years of age in the 1970s and 1980s at locations in north Cork.
The complaint made by the man relates to an allegation that he was sexually assaulted by the priest when he was just 12 in the early 1990s at a location in mid-Cork after the priest befriended his mother.
It is understood that all eight complainants have made statements to the commission of investigation chaired by Ms Justice Yvonne Murphy into clerical sexual abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne and that a chapter of a 400-page report relates to Fr B and the allegations made against him.
