The ‘Sunday Independent’ has traced serial abuser Bill Carney to Scotland, where he is living freely, writes Maeve Sheehan
By Maeve Sheehan
Sunday December 06 2009
ON THE walls of the Royal Dublin Golf Club hangs a plaque commemorating the golfers of the year. The name WP Carney holds the record for 1994. The exclusive club on Bull Island is not the place one would expect one of the most notorious paedophile priests in the Dublin archdiocese to be commemorated.
But Fr Bill Carney was a serial abuser of children, boys and girls, and the subject of 32 complaints to the archdiocese. Six of his victims were paid compensation by the Church authorities. He was also, by all accounts, an excellent golfer.
The progress of the paedophile priest is documented in chilling detail in Judge Yvonne Murphy’s Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese, which concludes there is evidence that he abused many more.
Even before he was ordained in 1974, he toured the children’s homes of the capital in the company of another priest, Fr Frank McCarthy. They ingratiated themselves with religious orders which ran the homes, offering homework help and holidays to the attention-starved children; some later complained of abuse. There was evidence to suspect he was part of a paedophile ring.
In 1983, Carney pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault, despite efforts by his bishop James Kavanagh to influence the investigation.
By the time he won the series of competitions that earned him golfer of the year in the Royal Dublin club, he had been turfed out of the priesthood and dismissed from the clerical state with a pay-off of £30,000, which the “crude and loutish” priest had negotiated from the archdiocese.
Carney managed to keep his shameful past a secret from his golfing buddies. Fellow members described Carney as a real “hard chaw” with a strong Dublin accent who prefaced almost everything he said with the f-word.
He swore frequently and his stock greeting was “how’s it going?”. He was frowned on for parking his taxi emblazoned with stickers such as “Make My Day” in front of the club house.
He probably would never have gotten into the exclusive Royal Dublin if he wasn’t in the priesthood; most applicants needed to be sponsored by four members but rules were relaxed for priests, who were given a concessionary membership.
More disturbing than his foul language was the fact that Carney regularly had young boys in tow. One golfer recalls boys aged between 10 and 12 hanging around the locker room, while the priest got ready for his game. Their job was to caddy for him. “It wasn’t uncommon for him to be driving around the car park with these young fellows sitting on his knee,” said one former member.
Carney’s past caught up with him. Not long after he won the accolade of golfer of the year, newspaper reports began to appear about his dubious past. The Royal Dublin got wind of it and Carney was invited before a committee to explain himself. He pleaded innocence but he was still expelled.
Carney left his taxi business and the flat he rented on North Frederick Street in the north inner city and moved to Gloucestershire in the UK.
One person who knew Carney at the time said he worked in a pub in the city of Gloucester and later trained as a chef. He began a relationship with a woman and got married and they are thought to have moved to Scotland around eight years ago.
The Murphy report said Carney was known to be living in Scotland but his exact whereabouts were unknown. Last week, the Sunday Independent traced him to a neat property, decorated in pastel shades and floral soft furnishings, conveniently located just 200 yards from a famous golf course.
Unlike his former bombastic self, Carney kept his head down in Scotland. A neighbour said: “He’s a really strange fish. I think he came to the town about eight years ago, from Ireland, where I believe he was a priest,” said a neighbouring guesthouse proprietor. “He keeps himself to himself and tends not to get out of a fairly small circle.”
When shown a picture of Carney, another neighbour replied: “Yes, that’s definitely him. He’s certainly recognisable. He’s a really weird guy, and a bit creepy.”
There are so many disturbing aspects of Judge Murphy’s report but one of the most chilling is the thought that Carney and others who perpetrated such terrible crimes against children are still at large. According to the report,
it’s not unusual for paedophiles to make themselves disappear and several priests mentioned in the report are believed to be living freely in unsuspecting communities.
Among them is Fr John Kinsella, who was released from prison in 2001 after serving a sentence for sexually assaulting two boys. No one seems to know where he is even though there are a number of complaints against him. Another priest, Fr Donato, who sexually abused a young schoolgirl, left the priesthood. He is now married to a woman he had a relationship with while he was still a priest and with whom he has a child.
That’s only among the 46 priests who were investigated by the commission. The Dublin archdiocese was aware of another 126 cases of priests who were suspected or admitted to child abuse; some are dead, some are living in restricted ministries, some are in jail and the whereabouts of others are unknown.
total creep I hope he burns in hell scum filth I remember him in my parish when I was growing up never trusted him and he tried to get me on side with him but I am six foot four tall and I think I scared him more than anything but that did not stop him trying to influence me and my friends. I remember him driving onto the local green in his Mirafiori car with the sun roof open and a big pair of shades on in the middle of the summer and asking my friends if they would like to go to the beach for a swim or his special Friday nights where he would have lads at a sleep over at his parish house never went my self but heard a lot of stories that I never thought could be possible till now. He is exactly the way people have described him loutish brash loud vulgar and a down right pest when it came to children. I myself remember seeing all this and thinking to myself this is very strange behaviour for a clergy man and he was not the only priest that we got in our parish that was not right another guy cant think of his name he would come visiting the local houses and sit at the table with mothers and fathers talking about the church their kids schooling but the funny thing was he would be smoking cigarettes having a drink of alcohol if he was offered and swearing and being right darn rude which i thought was very strange for a priest. i too lost one of my neighbours through this man’s exploits this chap hung himself over what had happened and he had to go far away to try and forget and he could not so ended his life terrible tragedy. if anybody out their is reading this and thinks they know me feel or remembers any of his e-mail I would like to know their thoughts on this after nearly 30 years of living with this guilt as I feel because i done nothing about it
thank you
David
Eloquent as ever Barry! Well done you!
A: Anti- Catholicism rears its ugly head again -David Quinn-Irish Catholic-11/12/2009
B: Liberal Church Wouldn’t handle Abuse Differently-David Quinn-Irish independent 11/12/2009
A TALE OF TWO DAVIDS
Just when you thought he had gone away, he comes back twice on the same day with two stories for two audiences. David preaches to the converted in letter A, with the title of it alone being explanatory with regard to those who condemn child abuse within the Catholic Church, post Dublin diocese report of course. What he claims these critics say I agree with them broadly while he also accuses like -minded guests of the media of sound and vision of being non-orthodox, and un-practicing Catholics. He then spearheads their criticism as lumping bishops and church into one and claims they want the lot to go. Is that a bad thing? Then it’s the numbers game again with David, and he not got any better at math’s in the interim since I last wrote about him.
He now claims two million Catholic church goers to church here every Sunday and I presume his point is that there is always safety in numbers and therefore it will go on, rotten to the core or not while outlining a doomsday scenario.
If the church is driven out of education, he bellows.
If Catholic schools are no more, he roars.
If the bishops are gone so is Catholic choice of education, he cries.
If the church is driven from ‘it’s’ hospitals, proper treatment from conception to grave is taken away, he shrieks. Is that a bad thing?
In sweeping broad strokes David then uses his old tricks of hiding culpability by generalizing sexual abuse among the population at large even though un-connected to the diocese report. At the same time driving home his point of it all being just a witch hunt anyway along with criminalizing those same ‘two million’ churchgoers. It is also worth reminding him that there is no such thing as a celibate child abuser as against a non- celibate one. I put this part down to his inflamed and hi-pitched oratory. He then takes the presumptuous approach of the word ‘we’ by asking but really telling us ‘why should we believe that women priests would make for a safer Church’. Then there is the Polanski twist to his argument
Taking the ‘we’ approach again David cites the behaviour of the great and good of Hollywood, as representing society as a whole in their defence of this child molester, suggesting it would have been much different had he been Fr. Polanski instead.
In the entire article he never once mentioned the word ‘victim’ or even the name of one. Then we come to letter B:
This is no more than the Irish version of the Daily Mirror against the English one, and he also seems aware that he is addressing a more enlightened audience . It is a lesson in the economy of words.
He writes about Bernard Law omitting that he was promoted for his cover-up of child abuse. He cites ‘Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela’ but again omits that this instruction never gave permission for corporation with civil authorities either. David calls the cover up and treatment of clerical child abusers of the Church as a therapeutic and compassionate approach to them, and still there is no mention of victims yet. Then there is talk about Willie the bishop.
Not knowing what Willie Walsh really thinks, David believes now instead if you polled all the bishops they would be in favor of women priests. Earth shattering indeed while reminding us that bishops pick bishops that were once priests, and in a complete about turn tells us that, ‘collectively, bishops are worse than useless.’
In the end of this article too there is not one mention of the word ‘victim’.
All I can write at this point is keep on going David for you need no help from me in showing us what you really are, for it is between the lines that you scrawl with a withered and crooked hand that you show us yourself.
12/12/2009
Barry Clifford.
I wonder if anyone has identified the presence of Carney in Scotland together with his history to the lawful authorities there.
MM
“Another priest, Fr Donato, who sexually abused a young schoolgirl, left the priesthood. He is now married to a woman he had a relationship with while he was still a priest and with whom he has a child.”
How is this priest allowed to have a child in his care, considering his past?
If it were anyone else , the child would have been removed at birth, unless the mother left this predator.
Thank You Paddy for taking the time to put all these articles where thay are easy for us to access.
It is now clear that the age of the Patriarchal religions is over.
The Church Corporation is at an end.
The one thing I learned in the just us system in Eire is- that it protects abusers and colludes with them to keep them safe from prosecution.
The sexual predators are rarely punished for their crimes- just a token few- to try and fool us that there is justice.
Instead the Just Us system and the church corporation are One.
Nothing has really changed much as pedophiles still manage to worm their way into getting access to innocent children.
The HSE whose job it is to protect children still punishes the abused children and even places them with known abusers.
Many children go missing from this wonderful “care system”, but who bothers to find them.?
Often the Gardai are not even told- after all children are still disposable in Eire in 2009.
It’s good to read these reports, thank you Paddy for signposting us to these reports, there should be a transparent report for the public and a place where all the abusers can be named and shamed for they each should be punished and their victims offered the decent compensation they deserve.
For the churches to survive, they need to work with the victims and be honest with everything as covering up the past will not do them any good.
Ramon