The Irish Times – Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Martin Drennan was auxiliary bishop in Dublin when one of the worst abuse cases came to light. Did he know about it? If so, what did he do, asks PATSY McGARRY
ALLEGATIONS OF serious sexual abuse against a priest were brought to the attention of Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese by two sisters in 1998 during Bishop Martin Drennan’s tenure as auxiliary bishop there. The bishop was ordained auxiliary on September 21st, 1997, and remained in Dublin until installed as Bishop of Galway on July 3rd, 2005.
The sisters, called “Martha” and “Mary” here to protect their identities, spoke to this reporter in June 2003. In February 1998, their mother went to the chancellor of the archdiocese, Msgr John Dolan, to report the abuse of one of her daughters by Fr Noel Reynolds 20 years previously when he was based in Kilmore Road parish in Dublin’s north city.
He was curate there from 1969 to 1978. She did not name him, nor was she asked to. She was told that, as her daughter was an adult, then it was she who would have to make the complaint. The mother was pessimistic about this happening due to the circumstances of her daughter’s life. Nothing was done.
Later in 1998, a nun who was a social worker at a drug treatment centre contacted Mgr Dolan to say a woman being treated there alleged she had been abused by Fr Reynolds when she was nine. The nun named the priest.
She also expressed concern about Fr Reynolds being chaplain then at the National Rehabilitation Institute, where there were children. Cardinal Connell was told of this in May 1998. Fr Reynolds was removed from the National Rehabilitation Institute in July 1998. The hospital was not told why.
Fr Reynolds had been appointed to the institute in July 1997.
In May 1997, two months before Fr Reynolds’s appointment at the institute, church authorities in Dublin were told by Dr Patrick Walsh of the Granada Institute that Fr Reynolds “should not be involved in non-structured or informal interactions with children . . .” There were 94 patients under 18 while he was at the institute.
(The Murphy report said Fr Reynolds admitted in March 1996 to then chancellor Msgr Alex Stenson that he was sexually attracted to children.)
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