Litany of abuse over decades by scout leaders
OVER the past two decades, numerous scout leaders have been convicted in high-profile cases for sexually abusing children.
Dublin Scout leader David O’Brien was jailed for fourand-a-half years in 2015 for sexually abusing six young boys on camping trips in the late 1970s and early ’80s. The 63-year-old would unzip the boys’ sleeping bags during the night, reach under their pyjamas and fondle them.
Scout troupe leader John ‘Jack’ Dunne targeted disabled children and abused young boys at a Dublin garda station where he worked during the 1960s. After serving a six-month jail sentence, six new victims came forward. However, he died before the case went to court, at the age of 83.
Ex-charity worker and former boy scout leader John Peppard was also sent to prison for one year in 2007 for taking and storing pictures of naked boys.
In 2005, John Dunne, a youth soccer coach and scout leader, was jailed for two-and-a-half years for filming boys in sexual poses. He had paid several boys from the Travelling community to pose naked. He abused two of the children.
Notorious paedophile Fr Sean Fortune was banned from the Catholic Scouts Association of Ireland for interfering with boys in 1977. Fortune, who was 44 when he killed himself in 1999, may have been abusing boys for 20 years.
In 2000, Catholic
Boy Scouts regional commissioner Denis O’Shea was jailed for 10 years for raping an 11-yearold schoolboy from 1997 to 1998.