I apologise unreservedly to Patricia ...I deeply regret any hurt caused
THE former Bishop of Killaloe has made a public apology to Patricia Donovan, the niece of Bishop Eamonn Casey, after he was used in a smear campaign to tarnish her allegations.
Bishop Willie Walsh, 84, told the Irish Mail on Sunday this week that he wants to ‘unreservedly apologise’ to the mother of two, who claims she was raped and sexually abused by her uncle, Bishop Casey, from the age of five in the late 1960s.
A short time after Ms Donovan made her complaint about Bishop Casey to police in the UK in 2005, he called Bishop Walsh and insisted she had also made ‘unfounded allegations’ against others.
Ms Donovan also made a formal complaint to gardaí that she was sexually abuse as a child by her brother, Fr Michael Donovan, who was forced to step down from his ministry in 1995 after an allegation of sexual abuse was made against him by an altar boy.
Bishop Casey made a series of claims about his niece to Bishop Walsh, which the Killaloe bishop went on to repeat on Clare Fm in December 2005, before Ms Donovan was formally interviewed by gardaí. At that time, she had only been interviewed by police in the UK, but that interview was not accepted by the Irish authorities and detectives from Limerick travelled to England to interview her some months later.
Bishop Walsh’s remarks were reported in a number of national newspapers at the time and have been repeated since.
The former bishop, who retired in 2010, told the MoS he is now ‘deeply sorry’ for any hurt he caused for repeating Bishop Casey’s remarks. He said that when he spoke on local radio he was not aware of any other allegation by Ms Donovan, nor was he aware of her allegation against her brother, until he was told by this newspaper this week. He said: ‘I want to apologise unreservedly to Patricia if I caused her hurt by my comments at that time. I deeply regret any hurt caused and apologise to her. I am deeply sorry. I was simply quoting Bishop Casey. I regret quoting Bishop Casey at that time. I should not have expressed confidence then that his name would be cleared.’ He added: ‘I did not say and had no intention of saying that her allegation had no credence nor did I make any judgment on her. I did not say that her allegations weren’t true, or that there was no foundation to them. If she or other people interpreted my comments as such I deeply apologise.’
The DPP did not bring charges against Bishop Casey on foot of Ms Donovan’s complaint, nor was any prosecution brought against her brother in relation to her complaint against him, nor in the case of the altar boy he allegedly sexually abused. Bishop Walsh said: ‘If there isn’t a direction by the Director of Public Prosecutions, or even if a person is found not guilty in court, that doesn’t mean that there is no merit in a person’s case.’
In an article in The Irish Times on December 10, 2005, Bishop Walsh was quoted as saying: ‘He [Bishop Casey] assured me that there wasn’t any foundation for this allegation.’ He added: ‘The person is personally known to him for a long number of years and he spoke with a lot of sympathy and compassion for that person.’