LAST MONDAY MORNING, amid the chatter of the conference room in the Law Library’s Dispute Resolution Centre, four men seated at the back were skitting and laughing with each other.
After a few minutes, the room quieted as proceedings got underway and a television was switched on to show Miriam O’Callaghan introducing an old RTÉ Prime Time piece from 2016.
At the back of the room, two of the four men, Jason Clancy and Colin Power, stood up and moved towards the wall, where they had a clearer view of their younger selves setting out in detail the abuse and trauma they suffered at the hands of Bill Kenneally in the late 1980s.
Power described going into “convulsions” of pain as he was abused, and Clancy outlined how he was strung up with handcuffs and orange twine before being assaulted. He estimated being abused over 300 times in total by the sex offender.
It was Clancy’s actions that originally set in train the process that led to the Dáil supporting the establishment of the Commission of Investigation.
Its mission has been to investigate allegations of a cover up in how Kenneally was handled by authorities.
In November 2012, Clancy reported Kenneally to gardaí, eventually leading to a criminal case which saw the sex offender jailed for 14 years in 2016 for his abuse of Clancy and nine other men. The abuse took place between 1984 to 1987.
A further five victims came forward in recent years leading to Kenneally being sentenced to four-and-a-half years for offences between December 1979 and March 1990.
As part of its work, the inquiry is examining separate garda investigations in 1987 and 2012. Both investigations have faced criticisms from some of the victims over beliefs that Kenneally could have been charged much earlier.
This week, the commission broadcast the 3 May 2016 Prime Time report by the broadcaster’s former southeast correspondent Damien Tiernan.
Called ‘The Lost Boys’, it sets out how gardaí attempted to deal with Kenneally in 1987.
Unreleased footage
For the first time, it also showed parts of unreleased footage from the interviews with then acting chief superintendent Sean Cashman and inspector PJ Hayes. They spoke to Tiernan for the report.
The programme, made in the weeks after Kenneally was first convicted of abusing children, carried interviews with Clancy, Power and some of Kenneally’s other victims.
In his interview, Cashman insisted that there was “no cover up at all” and that gardaí had done the best they could in how they dealt with allegations against Kenneally in 1987.
He said he had been contacted by a businessman who told him his son was being abused by Kenneally, and that the 15-year-old was “one of a number of students who were being lured to the house of a man named Billy Kenneally” for basketball lessons.
“In a short time, he had started to interfere with them,” Cashman recalled.
The father told Cashman his son could not be interviewed so Cashman contacted Kenneally’s uncle, a former Fianna Fáil TD also named Billy Keneally, who died in 2009.
The TD arranged for Kenneally to go to the garda station when he met the then Supt Cashman and Inspector PJ Hayes.
Upon meeting Kenneally, Cashman found him to be a “broken man” who was “absolutely emotional” during the discussion.
“He was shaking like a leaf, he was in terrible shape, I thought.
“He said, ‘I know why I’m here lads and I’m glad to be here because I want to be looked after’ – or words to that effect now. He might have said, ‘I want to be looked after’ or ‘I want to be treated’.”
Cashman said Kenneally was was told to get counselling and claimed he had a guard inform De La Salle secondary school about the allegations, to remove him from the school.
He wasn’t questioned by the gardaí again and continued to live in Waterford. His convictions in court in two separate cases showed he continued to abuse children.
When Cashman said they did “not have evidence to charge” Kenneally, Tiernan interjected to point to his admission of guilt.
“I’ve known a case where a man came through the station at one time and admitted murder that he hadn’t done. So you know the fact, he did admit it and I’ll have to say, I knew he was the culprit, it wasn’t a question of his imagination, I knew he was the culprit but I didn’t have a statement from an injured party.”
He added: “And I know that people were talking about it, it was a political family and it was a cover up. There was no cover up at all.”
Instead, Cashman said the “irony” of the situation was that he received help from the TD, Kenneally, but got “absolutely no help from any injured party” for the investigation.
In a section of the interview, never broadcast, the commission saw Cashman explain why he believed the victims “weren’t coming forward”, even as years passed.
Cashman said Bill Kenneally wasn’t “dragging them [victims] out” of their homes and school, and that “young people of that age have a lot of curiosity”.
Barrister Ray Motherway, instructed by PA Duffy & Co on behalf of two victims who are retaining their anonymity, questioned Tiernan on whether that was “victim blaming” by Cashman.
The journalist said he and RTÉ made editorial decisions to reflect the main things Cashman and Hayes said and noted that there wasn’t enough time to broadcast the full interviews with either the gardaí or the victims.
“I think he [Cashman] liked the idea that Bill Kenneally came in of his own volition, that it was old-school policing, that he contacted his relative, that the three of them were having a chat, ‘that we’ll sort this out’.
Tiernan added: “But I found that a very strange policing attitude when he had information that he admitted to not just one, but two, and then three boys had been abused at that stage…and that the matter was effectively being closed because Bill Kenneally had said I’m going to go see a counsellor.”
1988 follow-up actions
After Kenneally was released in 1987 and promised to receive medical help for his abuse of children, former superintendent Cashman maintained that he dispatched a guard to De La Salle secondary school to inform the principal, Brother Columba.
But Tiernan told the commission that during investigations for RTÉ, he met and spoke with the guard in question, Jim Hurley.
Tiernan alleged that Hurley told him that he was never sent to De La Salle.
“It’s dead simple. I wasn’t sent to that school, De La Salle. I’d nothing to do with the case,” Tiernan recalled Hurley telling him at the latter’s house in Tramore.
The commission has also heard that Kenneally was seen around DLS for a period after the guards allegedly contacted the school in early 1988.
On Wednesday, Mr Justice White referenced evidence heard in a previous hearing, held in private, which saw “undisputed evidence” in the form of a “compromising polaroid photo” given to the principal of the school, Brother Columba in the late 1980s.
The principal acted on the “serious allegations” regarding Kenneally and “terminated his contract” for coaching at the school.
In evidence put forward by Basketball Ireland, it noted that 1988-1990 was one period where it seemed Kenneally was not involved in basketball locally, before he resurfaced later.
The sports body also alleged that it never received any notification of Kenneally’s abuse of children until 2013, decades after Kenneally was removed from De La Salle.
Knowledge of Kenneally
A claim by many of the victims is that they believe a number of adults, including those in authority, knew about Kenneally long before Clancy made a complaint in 2012.
Evidence from Paul Walsh, one survivor who was present when the commission reopened on Monday, was recounted this week.
Walsh had recalled when he was 15 in the 1980s, he was warned by two gardaí about Bill Kenneally and told to stay away from the older man.
At the time, he was being abused by Kenneally.
It was claimed that guards told Walsh something to the effect of them holding “a file as long as his arm” on the sports coach.
When this was raised by journalist Saoirse McGarrigle at the commission this week, Mr Justice Michael White interjected to clarify that a previous hearing received testimony from gardaí who were involved in the relevant basketball team at the time.
“They made clear that they never did say that,” Mr Justice White said.
Responding to the intervention, McGarrigle said: “That’s ok, I’m just telling you what I was told.”
During his evidence, Tiernan recalled a conversation with a member of a GAA club in Waterford on 22 July 2017.
The conversation was part of Tiernan’s notes on the case which were provided to the commission.
The man, a Billy O’Connor, who has since died, is alleged to have told Tiernan that there were concerns about Kenneally as far as back as 1972.
“He told me that he warned a former chairperson of the club possibly 45 years
before – so that’s 45 years before 2017 – about Bill Kenneally.
“Billy O’Connor told me that he used to see Bill Kenneally looking at young lads in the changing room. He said he knew there was something wrong and there was no good in it.”
Tiernan added that O’Connor, who was then in his mid-seventies was “very cogent” and “clear in lots of memory”.
O’Connor recalled Kenneally always wearing “undergarments” when changing at the club.
“He confirmed to me and I asked him twice. I said, do you remember Gardaí calling to the club about Bill Kenneally? He said, ‘yes’.”
Role of monsignor
The inquiry is also examining the role of Catholic priest Monsignor John Shine, amid claims that he was aware of his nephew Bill Kenneally’s abuse of children as far back as 1987.
Shine, now deceased, resigned in 2016 from the board of a primary school in Tramore following campaigning by the victims.
It’s alleged that Shine was informed of the abuse by former Fianna Fáil TD Brendan Kenneally in 2002. Brendan Kenneally is a cousin of Bill Kenneally.
During his evidence, Tiernan recalled that before he started recording the interview with Hayes, the garda allegedly told him that “he didn’t want any questions about Monsignor Shine, [and] to leave him out of this as we’re friends for over 40 years”.
Tiernan told the commission: “I knew Shine said Mass most Sundays in Tramore and PJ Hayes collected the offerings at those.”
Both Hayes and Shine are now deceased.
The journalist recounted meeting with Shine on 29 March 2016 in Tramore as he researched the Prime Time documentary. Information and allegations about Shine did not feature in the report which made it to air.
“I remember that he didn’t really want to talk too much about his nephew Bill Kenneally. He said he had been very good to his parents, that he had showed a kindness that will never be seen and took very good care of his mother when she was unwell,” Tiernan said.
When asked to give his opinion on his roughly eight-minute interview with Shine, Tiernan said he “came away with the impression that he knew a lot more”.
“He was specifically saying things that I couldn’t dispute but that were not relevant. I’d ask specific questions and he’d say, ‘He was good to his mother,’” he said.
“So I got the impression that he was trying to impress on me that he was a particular character who did good things . . . I can’t say he told me lies on that particular character reference. From what I subsequently found out, he did tell me lies on what he did know in the past.”
Tiernan added that Shine was “brought in for questioning” by gardaí in 2013, following the Irish Times article, but “denied any knowledge of his nephew’s activities”.
Next week
The commission is expected to conclude before the end of the year with a report detailing its findings to be published after.
Next week, it will hear from senior gardaí involved in the 2012 investigation, along with former Fianna Fáil and junior minister Brendan Kenneally.
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