40-YEAR WAIT TO SEE HIM IN COURT
Bill Carney preyed on vulnerable children, including a 10-year-old Jane Conlon. After waiting almost 40 years to see him face up to his crimes, his death has robbed Jane of her day in court...
GARDA Finbarr Garland was barely nine months into his job when two frightened young boys walked into Coolock Garda Station clutching their father’s hand. It was the summer of 1983 and as the man asked to speak to the young garda in private, he obliged without question.
‘It was around teatime,’ recalls Mr Garland, who retired from his job as a Detective Sergeant in 2012. ‘The two little boys were only about eight or nine. I brought the father into a room and he outlined to me what Bill Carney had done to his children. All I can remember is these two young kids looking up at me with their big puffy eyes as if they had done something wrong and I was going to deal with them.’
It was only many years later — with the publication of the Murphy Report in 2009 — that Fr Bill Carney was uncovered as a prolific paedophile priest. For decades before, and with the knowledge of his church superiors, he had inveigled his way into the lives of countless innocent children, preying on their vulnerability and subjecting them to sadistic abuse.
Last Saturday, the 65-year- old was found dead in his cell at the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise, Co. Laois. He had been extradited from Britain two years ago and was on remand awaiting trial in relation to 34 historical sexual assaults between 1969 and 1989. His death means he will never face his victims in court.
Finbarr Garland is the only man to have ever secured a conviction against Carney. ‘ His name still sends a chill up my spine,’ says Garland. ‘Back in 1983 I was only starting out as a garda, but I knew something had to be done about him immediately. My priority was getting this dealt with because of the danger to other children.
‘We needed this man to be dealt with because he was a priest and he had unlimited access to children.’
After interviewing both children in their home with their parents, it emerged Carney’s crimes extended far beyond what was initially suspected.
‘The two children were altar boys,’ says Mr Garland. ‘ They named other children who would have been in the room when the offences took place. I spoke to those children with their parents. There were up to 40 children that had been mentioned — not all altar boys, he had access to the local Scout group. Eight parents submitted their children to give statements.
‘Those and my report went to the DPP, who directed to charge him with two counts of assault on the first two boys. He only faced two charges out of the eight that were submitted.’
The case i nvolving the two boys was heard in Howth District Court — a decision that ‘surprised’ Mr Garland, given the seriousness of the case.
‘It was all dealt with in under five minutes,’ he says. ‘It was lunchtime. The court was cleared. There was myself, my sergeant, the mother of the two young boys, Bill Carney and his legal representative, who I’m almost certain was a clergyman. He pleaded guilty. No evidence was heard from me.
‘There was a brief statement from the defence asking for leniency. He was given the Probation Act provided he seek psychiatric treatment. I do remember the mother was very upset by the outcome, which was understandable. We were in and out of there in no time.’
The conviction was recorded by Garland and sent i nto the court office. There is no trace of it.
‘I know for a fact it was sent in,’ says Garland. ‘Where it went from there I do not know. I renewed that record in later years to confirm that he had been convicted in 1983 of the sexual assault of two children. I was informed that I would have to go to court to give evidence to that effect at the pending trial, which now won’t be taking place.’
Mr Garland says he ‘wasn’t aware of any interference behind the scenes’, however the Murphy Report revealed it was ‘clear that Bishop James Kavanagh and Chief Superintendent Maurice O’Connor of Whitehall Garda Station were in touch with each other about the complaints against Fr Carney’. It added that the chief superintendent told Bishop Kavanagh it was unlikely that charges would be brought against the priest. O’Connor told the commission that he did tell Bishop Kavanagh that the complaints were being investigated. He said he himself did not read the file and he denied that he told the bishop that prosecution was unlikely.
The report found ‘the contents of the contemporaneous Church documents more persuasive than the evidence of Chief Superintendent O’Connor’.
‘I think the Church were very negligent in all of this,’ says Garland. ‘I was surprised at the outcome in court. Call it naivete, but when you hear of something like that happening to children, you think this is a serious offence, this guy should be put away.’
But Bill Carney wasn’t. The 1983 indecent assault case was not reported in the media. Even more remarkably, he was given another parish. Long before that point, and his ordination in 1974, Carney visited children’s homes across Dublin in the company of another priest, Fr Frank McCarthy who went on to be charged, in July 1997, at Newbridge District Court with seven counts of
‘When I told the nuns, I was slapped
and called a liar’
‘He said he got someone else to do the DNA test’
i ndecent assault on two young boys. McCarthy pleaded guilty, was convicted and sentenced to sixmonth concurrent sentences, which were suspended for two years.
When Carney and McCarthy toured the children’s homes, they ingratiated themselves with the religious orders which ran the homes, offering homework help and holidays to the attention- starved children. Some later complained of abuse.
Carney was appointed curate in Ayrfield parish in 1977, a role that allowed him to prey on children in State-run homes and institutions, on school trips and at swimming lessons. One of them, Jane Conlon, was just ten when she met him.
‘I ended up in The Grange children’s home aged ten,’ she says.
‘I went in there on May 18, 1976, and a few days later I met Bill Carney. He practically lived there — he would walk in and walk out as he pleased. He was friendly and was always around the kids. If you are a child in care, it doesn’t matter who comes in, they are giving you a bit of attention and that’s all you want. It’s sad to say it now, but if it was my birthday, I got the biggest present going because I knew he would buy me something.’
Carney had a flash car and he liked to drive fast. When he was around there was an endless supply of Coca Cola and sweets. He didn’t cook so there were trips to the chipper and fancy meals in hotels. Adults disapproved of his swearing and crazy driving, but the Catholic Church was still so trusted. No one suspected the truth about him.
Jane, now 49, recalls: ‘We would be sitting there and he would arrive and take who he wanted. No one batted an eyelid or asked where we were going. Most of the time he took us to his house in Crumlin, it was an open house.
‘If he got up in the middle of the night and disappeared we would be up putting on lights watching movies. The first time I went there nothing happened. The next time he raped me. I was ten. Then there were trips in the car. He took me up to the market in the North, to Ballybunion in Kerry. In the house sometimes there were two or three of us, but the other two were younger than me. It’s hard to explain. We were allowed to run riot. We were dumped in there. He got up early in the morning and went and said Mass, we were running round outside going wild. None of the neighbours said a thing.’
The sexual abuse, which varied f rom i ndecent assault to rape, continued for several years.
‘I thought it was normal,’ says Jane. ‘I thought, “Great, I’m getting out of this place for the weekend.” But then you kind of thought during the day, “Oh god the day is turning into night.” You didn’t really want the night to come. He would tell me that if I said anything to anyone I would go to hell — “No one will ever believe you,” he said. And he would still say, “You’re special, I like you the best”.’
Aged 12, Jane went to the nuns who were looking after her and told them what was going on. ‘I got fed up with it and I really didn’t want to go that weekend. It was most weekends at that stage and I had had enough. I couldn’t do it any more. I told the nuns. I got slapped with a set of keys and told I was a liar.’ Two years later Jane was sent to the High Park Magdalene laundry in Drumcondra, Dublin. She was 14.
‘I was put in there because of him,’ she says. ‘I told the social worker and told them that if I got pregnant by Bill Carney it would be okay because he was going to mind me. Next thing I was packed off to High Park.’
Ten years later, Jane was trying to rebuild her life. In an effort to get on the social housing l i st, she was advised to get a letter from a priest. She went to Bill Carney.
‘He raped me in the presbytery,’ she says. As a result, Jane says she fell pregnant. Her claim that Bill Carney fathered a child is dealt with in the Murphy Report.
It concludes that DNA testing showed he was not the f ather. Jane disputes this. ‘He told me he got someone else to take the test,’ she says. The DPP decided not to pursue charges against Carney in relation to Jane’s rape allegation or historical abuse claims. She was however compensated by the Church in an undisclosed payment.
In 1992, the Catholic Church convicted Carney, under canon law, of child sexual abuse but he refused to l eave the parish house. The Murphy Report revealed he only left after he was paid IR£30,000 by the Dublin archdiocese.
He went to Britain, first to Cheltenham and then Scotland. When his shocking past as a child abuser was first exposed by the Murphy Report, Carney had reinvented himself as a respectable married man and owner of a guest house in the Scottish golfing town of St Andrews, where he passed his days perfecting his swing.
His wife, Joan Clayton, whom he met in 1995 at a singles night at the Golden Valley Hotel in Cheltenham, in 1995, said she knew nothing of his past. The couple were on holidays in Spain when the Murphy Report was published. In it, he was described as one of the Church’s worst sexual predators. He was suspected of abusing up to 32 children, in some cases working with other priests. Ms Clayton later divorced him. He continued to live freely in Britain — pursued occasionally by the media, while blaming his past on his drinking — until April 2013, when he was arrested in leafy Bidford in Warwickshire, where he had been living. He was extradited back to Ireland to face 34 charges of indecent assault.
Dubliner Peter Doyle knew Carney for more than 35 years. He was his best man when he married Joan Clayton and visited him regularly in prison. He runs a B&B in Stokeon-Trent in England where Carney stayed during his years in England.
‘I visited him in prison quite a lot,’ he says. ‘He was remorseful. When the charges were read to him he said to me that he found it very hard to believe that he could have done that at all. He wasn’t saying he didn’t do it, he wasn’t saying he did. He just said that he found it so bad that he found it hard to fathom that even in his alcoholic state he could do that.’
Doyle added that ‘if women can use PMS as an excuse for murder, alcohol can be used as an excuse’.
Doyle claimed Carney was beaten up in prison and the reason his victims wouldn’t get ‘their day in court’ was that his health hadn’t been properly cared for by the authorities.
‘If these people feel aggrieved that they didn’t get their day in court they should take it up with the State,’ he said. ‘That man was not looked after in prison. When he went into prison three years ago he had a heart complaint, a very serious heart complaint. That was not, in my opinion, looked after properly. If it had been, he would have had his day in court.
‘I can’t say he was innocent, I can’t say he was guilty. Nobody got justice, not even Bill Carney. Had he been found guilty he would’ve been punished, that would’ve been justice. He wanted to see a trial but sadly he died in advance. He still believed in his faith. That’s the one judge he will face. He was ready for that.’
Doyle said he would not be informing victims of any details surrounding Carney’s burial, despite their requests for closure. For Jane, the lack of empathy comes as no surprise.
‘His abuse was covered up so why wouldn’t his burial be as well?’ she says.
‘All I wanted to do was see him stand trial. Okay, he wasn’t being tried for crimes against me, but for other people. I got a message last week to say he was dead and all I wanted to do was go to his funeral and watch his coffin being taken out. I think about him every day.
‘I don’t think I will be able to get past the point where I can’t think of him. If he didn’t abuse me what would I have been like today?’