RTÉ being sued by ex-archbishop
Former cleric who paid €176k to cover up affair tells court he was depicted as paedophile on 2011 TV show
A FORMER archbishop paid a woman €176,000 to keep their relationship quiet – but insists she was not underage at the time, a court has heard.
Lawyers for Richard Burke yesterday claimed he was being blackmailed by Dolores Atwood, whom he met while he was working in Africa.
Mr Burke is suing RTÉ for libel, claiming he was wrongly depicted as a paedophile in a May 2011 Prime Time Mission To Prey documentary about Irish missionaries.
He insists Ms Atwood was 21 when they embarked on a relationship, and that she was ‘sexually promiscuous’ and the ‘instigator’ of the relationship, the court heard.
But Ms Atwood has maintained she was 13 when he first touched her inappropriately, the High Court was told.
Mr Burke claims he was the victim of a ‘heinous slur’ on his good name and is seeking compensation for the ‘enormous damage done to him’, his lawyers told the court.
The Tipperary-born former cleric, 66, yesterday sat on the opposite side of the courtroom to Ms Atwood, now 45, as the case opened in front of Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley and a jury.
He insists he is not a ‘serial paedophile rapist’ and that for
‘He paid her a large sum’
RTÉ to make such an assertion amounted to a ‘savage defamation’.
His counsel, Jack Fitzgerald SC, said: ‘He did have a sexual relationship with her, but not when she was underage – not when she was 13 or 14 as the programme recounts.
‘She leant on him – as an Archbishop who had sexual relations with her – she leant on him and he paid her a l arge sum of money. That’s something that is not in any way mentioned on the programme.’
A jury of six women and six men was shown the Mission To Prey programme at the centre of the case. The documentary included an interview with Ms Atwood in which she alleged that she was first touched inappropriately when she was 13 and Mr Burke visited her in hospital.
Ms Atwood said on the tape: ‘I didn’t know what to think. Nobody done that to me before.’ She later alleged: ‘The first time I had sex with him I was 14.’
The film alleged that the archbishop ‘continued to have sex with Dolores throughout her teens’ and wrote letters to her that he suggested she should destroy after reading them.
It was only as Ms Atwood got older that she realised the significance of what had happened Interview: Dolores Atwood to her as a teenager, it was alleged. However, Mr Burke insists he did not know Ms Atwood when she was 13 or 14.
His counsel, Mr Fitzgerald, told the court: ‘He had sexual intercourse with Dolores Atwood when she was 21 – never when she was a minor.’
A letter from Mr Burke’s Dublin-based solicitor Robert Dore to RTÉ in November 2011, read to the court by Mr Fitzgerald, claimed: ‘ Dolores Atwood was the instigator of this intimate relationship. My client has been repeatedly beset and blackmailed by Dolores Atwood, who was sexually promiscuous.
‘As a result of her blackmail, my client has had to pay significant sums of money to her.
‘Dolores Atwood is a thoroughly unreliable person who is motivated by malice towards my client, and who is prepared to lie about him to destroy his reputation.’ The l etter also claimed that Mr Burke was an ‘easy target’ and that RTÉ was ‘prepared to take unfair advantage of this’.
The court heard Mr Burke was ordained as a priest in 1975 before being sent to Nigeria where he stayed for more than 20 years. He returned to work in Maynooth between 1990 and 1996, before being appointed Archbishop of Benin city in Nigeria. He resigned in 2010.
Mr Fitzgerald told the court that more recently his client has been living alone ‘outside London surviving on social welfare’ and had felt ‘utter helplessness’ against the ‘might of RTÉ’.
Mr Burke is expected to give evidence from the witness box today. Mr Fitzgerald said the jury would hear ‘of the pressure she put him under such that he became terrified of the exposure of the relationship he had with her’.
Mr Fitzgerald added: ‘You will hear from him of the payment of large sums of money to her from him due to the pressure she was putting on him.
‘The options she was offering him in order to keep quiet about their relationship: one of which was that he would pay – over five years – another €50,000, on top of a large sum of money amounting to €176,000 plus that he had already paid to her.’
Today, the jurors will also watch an edition of RTÉ’s nowdefunct Frontline, then hosted by Pat Kenny and will listen to a Morning Ireland discussion, both of which followed the initial television broadcast.
The case, which continues, is expected to last three weeks.
‘I didn’t know what to think’