THE FORMER CEO of The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland has described the former Catholic Bishop of Galway Eamonn Casey as “a sexual predator”.

Ian Elliott makes the comments in a new RTÉ documentary, Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets, in association with the Irish Mail on Sunday. The documentary will air tonight.

The programme examines the Catholic Church’s handling of allegations against Casey, who died in 2017 aged 89.

It includes an interview with Casey’s niece, Patricia Donovan, who claims that he first raped her at the age of five and that the sexual abuse continued for years. 

It also reveals how a six-figure settlement was paid by the Catholic Church to one complainant after Casey’s death, and that the Vatican banned Casey from public ministry in 2007 following “allegations”. 

Casey is best-known for the revelation in 1992 that he fathered a child with an American woman, Annie Murphy, in 1974. 

Murphy wrote a book about their relationship and appeared on The Late Late Show for a famous interview with host Gay Byrne.

Elliott, who has direct knowledge of Patricia Donovan’s complaint against Casey, told the investigation that he found her account of what she experienced “entirely credible”.

He described Casey as, on balance of probabilities, “an offender, a sexual predator”.

Speaking for the first time on camera, Donovan tells the programme: “Some of the things he did to me, and where he did them… The horror of being raped by him when I was five, the violence. And it just carried on in that vein… He had no fear of being caught.

“He thought he could do what he liked, when he liked, how he liked… He was almost, like, incensed that I would dare fight against him, that I would dare try and hurt him, I would dare try and stop him… It didn’t make any difference.”

In 2019, Galway Diocese, where Casey was bishop from 1976 to 1992, told Irish Mail on Sunday reporter Anne Sheridan that it had received just one allegation of child sexual abuse against him.

However, the programme reveals that the diocese has since confirmed it had records at that time of  “five people who had complained of childhood sexual abuse against Bishop Casey.”

These independent accusations relate to alleged events in every Irish diocese where Casey worked.      

Six-figure settlement

The programme also reveals how the Limerick Diocese paid over €100,000 in a settlement to one of Casey’s accusers after his death.

The current Bishop of Limerick Dr Brendan Leahy, who has access to documents relating to complaints made in his diocese, says: “I express deep sorrow and regret to anyone who has been wounded by clerical abuse, including the people referred to in this documentary.

“They deserve our respect, belief and support. Without commenting on any specific allegation, I have no reason to disbelieve any of the allegations made.”

The Vatican confirmed to the documentary for the first time that Casey was formally removed from public ministry in 2007 following “allegations” which, RTÉ says it has established, included his niece Patricia Donovan’s complaint of child sexual abuse. 

That restriction continued for the last ten years of his but life but was never publicly disclosed in Casey’s lifetime.

The documentary has also discovered evidence that Casey violated the Vatican’s sanctions on several occasions and continued to present himself as a priest across several years. 

Galway Diocese has confirmed this, but said that Casey was reprimanded for it by the late Bishop Martin Drennan, who was responsible for policing the restrictions.

In early 2006, the Irish Bishops announced that Casey was moving back to Ireland from England to retire. By this stage, the Vatican had now received at least two allegations of child sexual abuse against him.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided not to prosecute him. Church investigations were ongoing.

The Vatican told the programme that by 2006, following unspecified “allegations”, “Bishop Casey had been requested not to publicly exercise the ministry” and that this was “reiterated formally” a year later.

It said that Casey “was never reinstated… in spite of insistence from him and on his behalf” and “regardless of the outcome of the civil procedures.”

The documentary states that when RTÉ requested clarification from Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the President of the Vatican department responsible for handling complaints of child sexual abuse, he said: “Cases concerning Bishops are reserved to the Holy Father personally and only the Secretariat of State would be in a position to share information.”

Casey consistently denied all the allegations of child sexual abuse made against him. Although all the complaints were reported to An Garda Síochána, he was never charged with, or prosecuted for, any sexual crimes.

Despite his resignation as Bishop of Galway in 1992, he remained a Bishop until his dying day and claimed his removal from ministry was unjust.

The Vatican declined to say what investigative process was followed or whether the sanctions it imposed on Casey were punitive or precautionary.

Bishop Casey’s Buried Secrets will be broadcast tonight at 9.35pm on RTÉ One.