BASKETBALL IRELAND RECEIVED “no allegations” prior to 2013 informing it of “child abuse by Bill Kenneally” and would have removed the Waterford man from the organisation had it found out sooner, an inquiry has been told.
A former commissioner for the association, John Landy, told the commission that “nobody put their hand up and told Basketball Ireland” about Kenneally’s abuse of children.
Landy said he felt “disgusted” by Kenneally’s actions and insisted that the organisation “did the best it could” to safeguard children in its care throughout his half a century in basketball.
Kenneally was involved in administrative and managing roles in Irish basketball from the 1970s to 2013. This included him being part of the Irish representation at world games for senior and college-level basketball in Japan and New York in the 1990s.
Kenneally, now 72, is currently serving prison sentences for abusing 15 boys from 1979 to 1990.
Gardaí have confirmed they were aware of the abuse in 1987 but decided not to charge him, while Bill Kenneally’s cousin, former Fianna Fáil Brendan Kenneally, told a newspaper that he became aware in 2002 and sought medical help for his relative.
The inquiry, chaired by Mr Justice Michael White in the Law Library in Dublin, is investigating allegations of collusion between the sports body and organisations including An Garda Síochána, the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore and the former South Eastern Health Board.
Its scope also includes unnamed “political figures” who may have prevented Kenneally from being arrested and charged at an earlier stage.
Resignation from club
Landy told the commission that when Kenneally’s local club Waterford Vikings learned of his actions, following media coverage in April 2013, the club held an emergency meeting and contacted Kenneally.
“[The club] asked him if it was true and immediately he said ‘yes, it’s true’,” Landy said, adding that the club told Kenneally he had to “resign”.
“He resigned the very next day then,” Landy continued. “That’s the first the club heard and the basketball community in Ireland heard.”
Landy said Kenneally’s role as a manager for the men’s senior and college teams did not involve coaching and instead focused on voluntary work as a “statistician” which included recording plays in each game, along with making transport arrangements for teams.
Kenneally, who was an accountant in his professional life, “was good with figures so that was an ideal role for him”, Landy told the commission.
He said he originally knew Kenneally from attending a coaching camp with him in Dungarvan around 1973 or 1974 and met him regularly at monthly committee meetings in the 1980s.
When asked if he had any suspicions of any untoward behaviour by Kenneally, or had heard any rumours, Landy said he had not.
“I was never a commissioner in Waterford,” he said. “There were no rumours or anything like that.
“If there a complaint about abuse or if somebody was charged by the gardaí, he was immediately taken out and we would have notified the school that he was out,” Landy said.
“We weren’t the GAA, we weren’t rugby, we weren’t soccer, there wasn’t million of pounds coming in the door,” Landy said. “We did the best we could do with the resources we had.”
Child protection
He said that child protection has been monitored more closely over the past decade, due to work by the Federation of Irish Sport and Sport Ireland, with each club requiring safety officers and stricter rules around registration of players.
But Landy said that prior to 2013, basketball administrators still took child protection issues seriously.
“We’ve had cases in the past, in the 1980s, where coaches were acting inappropriately and we would have referred that to the gardaí.”
Barra McGrory, a barrister for Phoenix Law representing a group of victims, asked Landy what would the organisation have done if it had learned of Kenneally’s abuse of children earlier.
“By 1987/88, two medical practitioners, two senior gardaí and possibly a clergy member, knew about Mr Kenneally’s activities,” McGrory said.
“Had the basketball association been told at club level, would they have removed him then?”
“Yes,” Landy said.
“And similarly in 2002?” McGory asked.
“Yes,” Landy confirmed.
Landy added that he was unaware if Kenneally was coaching children at club level, with the national body “two steps” removed from the club scene in Ireland in the past.
The commission has previously heard that Kenneally was coaching teenagers at De La Salle secondary school in Waterford city when allegations came to light in 1987.
Mr Justice White told Landy that a previous hearing, held in private, saw “undisputed evidence” that the principal of the school, Brother Columba, was told about “serious allegations” in the late 1980s regarding Kenneally.
“He immediately terminated Mr Kenneally’s contract to the school. On a separate occasion, a compromising polaroid photograph was actually produced to Brother Columba,” the judge said.
He added: “Obviously none of that filtered up to Basketball Ireland.”
Landy said that no basketball body had received that information in the late 1980s and said he had only learned of it when speaking to his solicitor prior to giving evidence to the commission.
“The De La Salle school in Waterford may have brought it the attention of the local clergy and it may have ended there. I’m only speculating,” Landy said.
Landy said that adults and children were never assigned to stay together in accommodation on trips away, and was asked by Mr Justice White about one victim who told the inquiry that he was assigned to stay in a room with Kenneally at a tournament in Cork in 1979.
Landy said, in his experience, children were always “billeted together” during tournaments and camps.
“Even in 1979 it as a matter of common sense,” Mr Justice White said. “You wouldn’t put in an 11-year-old with a man in his 30s.”
Search of records
Landy told the commission that extensive electronic searches of Basketball Ireland’s records returned no information or concerns being raised about Kenneally.
He said that finding records from 1992 was “probably just too far back for the current system”, particularly around any information relating to the use of a bed-and-breakfast in Dublin at that time. The commission has previously heard that gardaí retrieved a guest register for this accommodation as part of a proposed investigation that did not materialise.
Hard copy records belonging to Basketball Ireland were held in an industrial estate in Ballymun but were “destroyed” in a fire in April 2015, Landy told the commission.
Garda sources
Earlier today, McGrory – for the victims – pressed Sunday World journalist Eamon Dillon on whether he spoke to any gardaí before his newspaper published an article which identified Kenneally for the first time.
The story was published five days after the Irish Times broke the story, reporting on an unidentified sports coach who was working with children despite admitting to abusing children decades earlier.
Mr Justice White has previously outlined that senior gardaí who were involved in the 2012 investigation into Kenneally were “absolutely adamant” that “they didn’t leak anything” around the case, and that “their acceleration” of the investigation was a result of Kenneally being named in the press.
In earlier evidence, Irish Times journalist Barry Roche said he spoke to a complainant whom he declined to identify to the Commission.
On Monday, former RTÉ correspondent Damien Tiernan told the commission he believed it was possible that he was informed of the story by Roche, which he said was a typical practice at the time.
Dillon said he did not speak to any gardaí when readying the article and instead went to Kenneally’s office in Waterford to confirm the information “with the person at the centre of the allegations”.
He said he could not recall exactly how he learned of Kenneally’s name but believed it was “known in media”.
“I was assigned the story,” Dillon said.
McGrory told the reporter that one victim was contacted by a garda liaison officer in advance of the article coming out and “told that it was coming out”.
The barrister asked “how did the garda know” about the Sunday World piece.
Dillon said he had “no idea”, adding that he had “no sources official or otherwise” for his report.
“I didn’t speak to gardaí in relation to this,” he said, before concluding his evidence.
Campaign
The commission was formed following a campaign by survivors into the handling of complaints of sexual abuse against the former basketball coach Bill Kenneally.
Last May, Kenneally received a four-and-a-half-year sentence for abusing five boys on unknown dates between December 1979 and March 1990. He was aged between his 20s and 40s when carrying out the abuse.
The 72-year-old accountant, from Laragh, Summerville Avenue, Waterford, had already been serving a 14-year sentence for abusing 10 boys from 1984 to 1987.
The commission is expected to conclude before the end of the year with a report detailing its findings to be published after.
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