How Church's handling of clerical child abuse led to court cases decades later
1973Norbertine priest Fr Brendan Smyth began his abuse of schoolboy Brendan Boland (12). It continued for two years.
Early 1975Brendan Boland spoke to a priest in his home town of Dundalk about his abuse by Smyth. It was reported to church authorities. The bishop of Kilmore, Francis McKiernan, received reports of another allegation of abuse by Smyth involving a boy in Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan.
March 1975Fr Seán Brady was asked by Bishop McKiernan to conduct a canonical inquiry into the two allegations involving Smyth. The then Fr Brady was a 35-year-old teacher at St Patrick's College, Cavan, and part-time secretary to Bishop McKiernan. Brady also held a doctorate in canon law.
March 29th, 1975Fr Brady and two local priests interviewed Brendan Boland (14) in Dundalk. The boy's father accompanied him but was not allowed sit in on the interview as that was contrary to canon law procedures. Notes at the inquiry were taken by Fr Brady.
April 4th, 1975Fr Brady interviewed a second boy (15) in the parochial house at Ballyjamesduff. Fr Brady conducted this inquiry alone. This second boy has not gone public.
At the end of each interview each boy was asked and agreed to Fr Brady’s request, in line with canon law procedures, that they take an oath. It confirmed the truth of what they had said and they agreed to keep matters confidential. The wording of the oath was: “I [name] hereby swear that I have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that I will talk to no one about this interview except authorised priests.”
After signing a statement confirming that what they said would remain confidential they were asked to repeat the oath with an additional sentence: “so help me God and these holy Gospels which I touch”.
Brendan Boland has said that at the time “my parents, who were good God-fearing people, and I were assured that Fr Brendan Smyth would not be allowed to associate with young boys and girls and that there would be no recurrence of the abuse which I and other victims had suffered”.
He said that “as a result of these assurances, I felt safer and I hoped that the assurances would mean that others would not suffer as I had.” Fr Brady passed his findings to Bishop McKiernan.
April 12th, 1975Bishop McKiernan reported these findings to Smyth's religious superior, the abbot of Kilnacrott Norbertine monastery in Co Cavan. Bishop McKiernan withdrew Smyth's priestly faculties where Kilmore diocese was concerned and advised psychiatric intervention.
1994Smyth was convicted in a Belfast court on 17 counts of sexual abuse involving four members of one family. Their abuse occurred in the mid-1980s.
1997Smyth pleaded guilty to another 74 counts of child sexual abuse at a trial in Dublin. Sentenced to 12 years, he died in prison in August 1997, a month after sentence.
Brendan Boland attended Smyth’s trial in Dublin. He met victims 10 to 15 years younger than himself. He has said that guilt plagued him when he heard that Smyth had continued to abuse children for years after the 1975 inquiry in Dundalk. “I was devastated by this revelation,” he said.
“I felt I had not done enough. I felt responsible for the misery of Fr Smyth’s subsequent victims. My guilt plagued me.”
In 1997 he initiated legal action against the Norbertine Order, Cardinal Seán Brady as Archbishop of Armagh, the archdiocese where his abuse occurred.
2005The case against the Norbertines was settled. The case against the Archdiocese of Armagh was settled last December.
*This article was amended on May 2nd, 2012 to amend a factual error.
