By OLENKA FRENKIEL - BBC 2
Added: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 UTC

Thanks to LWS for the link.
Original link



All the children in Ayrfield, Dublin, knew fun-loving Father Bill Carney - not just the altar boys and those who met him through school, but members of the Scout troop he ran and the groups of local children he took swimming.

His door was always open, there was a ready supply of Coke in the fridge and in the 1980s he had the very latest thing to lure youngsters in - a video player.

Adults disapproved of his swearing and crazy driving, but the Catholic Church was still so trusted, no-one suspected the truth about him.

Bridie Dwyer still lives in Ayrfield. Above the fireplace, with other family photographs is a picture of her youngest child, Paul, on his first Communion day.

At the age of 13 Paul went with other boys to watch videos at Father Carney's house and to have a sleepover, Mrs Dwyer told me. But at 2am Paul unexpectedly returned home.

"Thought you were going for a sleepover?" she recalled asking him as he pushed past her. "Didn't want to stay," he replied and shut his door.

"That's when he'd been raped," Mrs Dwyer told me, "but I didn't know".
...
"So the case stopped," his mother told me, "and, a couple of weeks later Paul committed suicide. He couldn't handle it any more.
...
Continue reading

TAGGED: ABUSE, CHILDREN, RELIGION