Kenneally: I told gardaí I was abusing teen boys, but heard nothing back for 25 years
Abuser turned down council seat fearing ‘history’ would be brought up
SEX abuser Bill Kenneally has said he told gardaí in a 1987 meeting about his abuse of teenage boys, but ‘heard nothing’ from them again on the matter until 25 years later.
Kenneally also said that years after this he was offered his cousin’s seat on Waterford City and County Council, after Brendan Kenneally became a minister of state in 1992.
He also claimed he had been abused by a man who lived locally when he was around 15 years old, over a ‘couple of months’, and did not report it to anyone.
The former Waterford basketball coach gave evidence at the Commission of Investigation examining the response of gardaí and others to allegations of sexual abuse made against him.
Kenneally, in his early 70s and formerly of Summerville Avenue, Waterford city, is serving a jail term after pleading guilty to ten sample counts of indecently assaulting ten boys at locations in Waterford in the 1980s.
Wearing a suit and accompanied by two Irish Prison Service officers, Kenneally spoke about those he said knew about his abuse of teenage boys in the 1980s.
Carrying a red and blue-striped plastic bag with a blue ring binder in it, Kenneally told the commission on Monday that he had a meeting with two senior gardaí in the boardroom of a Garda station on December 30, 1987.
He said he was at a basketball training session when his uncle, former Fianna Fáil TD Billy Kenneally, told him he had been asked to go to the Garda station.
Kenneally was asked by Barra McGrory, a barrister representing some of the survivors, whether he wondered why he was going to a Garda station, and Kenneally said: ‘No, because I felt like it was out of control.’
Aged 37 at the time, he said he told the gardaí ‘what I was doing’ at what he described as an informal meeting, at which it was ‘highly unlikely’ he had been cautioned. He told the commission that the names of seven boys he had abused were mentioned during the meeting, though he could not be sure if he or gardaí brought up certain names.
‘I mentioned handcuffs and I mentioned touching genitalia,’ he told the commission. He said the gardaí asked if ‘there was any sodomy involved, and I said there wasn’t’. Asked if they seemed to be relieved, he said: ‘Yes, that was known as abuse in the 1980s.’
He said he was told not to have any contact with any of the boys again and to get psychiatric help.
A garda stopped him on Waterford’s O’Connell Street on March 1, 1988, told him to get into the car and said: ‘We’ve been told to keep an eye on you’, but did not say by who exactly, the commission heard.
He said he visited a local psychiatrist and that he ‘got the impression he was expecting a call from me’. He saw the doctor five or six times in January and February, and once in the summer when he felt ‘urges’ return.
He said he did not return to the doctor after he was told the chemist would know what the prescription Kenneally was given ‘was about’.
‘I was afraid of that and I don’t think I went back to him after that,’ he said, adding that his ‘impression’ was that his maternal uncle, Monsignor John Shine, knew about, and was the link with, the local psychiatrist.
It was put to him a ‘trilogy’ of people – the Kenneally and Shine branches of his family, and senior gardaí – were involved. Kenneally said: ‘They were taking steps to help me with my problem.’
Asked what he had thought about the issue being dealt with by two branches of his family and the gardaí, he said: ‘I would say it was kind of normal procedure at the time.’ He said he did not believe others would have been treated differently, adding: ‘It wouldn’t be unusual for somebody to get a warning first.
‘No, it wasn’t special treatment. I think everybody is entitled to be treated that way in a first interview.’
He said that between March 1, 1988 and December 13, 2012, ‘I heard nothing’ from gardaí.
‘On December 13, 2012, gardaí came to the house and did a search. I was not arrested on that day, I gave a voluntary statement on which I admitted a number of things,’ he said.
Asked if he had a sense in 1987 that he was going to the Garda station to discuss a serious crime, Kenneally suggested it would be viewed more seriously now than then. ‘It wouldn’t have been regarded as one quarter as serious then as it is nowadays. That’s fact,’ he said.
‘I know if it came up at that time, the sentence would have been possibly two years, the sentences would have been concurrent.’
Kenneally also appeared to defend the use of handcuffs on his victims, saying: ‘It’s become very popular in sexual activities since.’ Kenneally’s grandfather, Willie Kenneally, became a Fianna Fáil TD for Waterford after winning a by-election in 1954. His uncle Billy Kenneally and first cousin Brendan Kenneally were also TDs for Waterford. Bill Kenneally said he was offered a seat on Waterford City Council when his cousin became a minister of state for tourism in 1992.
He said this role meant he was guaranteed to be a mayor in a year or two, but he turned it down and didn’t tell anyone why. ‘Because it would increase the possibility of my history [being brought] up,’ he added.
In 2001, his cousin Brendan Kenneally learned about his abuse of boys, the commission heard. Bill Kenneally said he ‘definitely’ would not think his uncle Billy would have told his son Brendan about the abuse before he became a minister of state.
When gardaí came to Kenneally’s home in December 2012, he said he believed the sergeant expressed surprise when he said he had ‘sorted’ this out in 1987 with other Garda members.
Kenneally is due to continue giving evidence before the commission today.
‘I felt like it was out of control’
‘Normal procedure at the time’