ANN LOVETT: IT’S TIME FOR THE TRUTH
FF urges Church to act as tragic schoolgirl’s boyfriend claims a bishop swore him to keep silent 34 years ago
THERE was growing pressure on the Catholic Church last night to ‘cooperate fully’ with inquiries into allegations of a cover-up in the decades-old Ann Lovett scandal.
The calls come as a 51-year-old man came forward and said he was the dead 15-year-old’s boyfriend, raising fresh questions about the tragedy 34 years ago.
Ann Lovett died on January 31, 1984, after giving birth to a stillborn boy in a grotto in the centre of the Granard, Co. Longford.
The tragedy shook the nation and yesterday’s revelations will only add to what has long been a touchstone scandal in Irish life.
Richard ‘Ricky’ McDonnell has told the Irish Times that Ms Lovett had left two previously unreported letters, one of which was addressed specifically to him.
Mr McDonnell, who grew up in Granard but later lived in the UK, says local priest Fr John Quinn told him to burn the letter shortly after he had been given it.
He also alleges he was later taken to a meeting with the then-bishop
of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise Colm Reilly, who urged him to take a vow of silence on the issue – and had him kiss his ring to seal the promise.
The former Irish soldier admitted in the startling interview that he and Ann had had a sexual relationship and she often spent the night with him at his rented family home in Granard, and that her parents were aware of this.
He said that nine months before the tragedy, they had grown apart, after she had come to him ‘crying and sobbing’. He asked if she had been raped but she didn’t reply.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin yesterday expressed concern to the MoS about ‘the amount of still unanswered questions’ in the case.
The Catholic Communications Office issued a statement to the Irish Times, but did not respond to 13 separate attempts from the MoS to seek comment yesterday.
Mr McDonnell revealed that when he was 15 and Ann was 13, the young couple experienced something ‘like love at first sight’ in the Copper Pot bar in Granard.
‘She cried and begged me not to tell anyone’
Ann would regularly stay over at his family home, where he lived alone, as his mother had gone to live in England. They were not using contraception and she told him she would go to a relative in Dublin if she became pregnant.
Mr McDonnell went on to describe a disturbing night when Ann arrived at his home ‘crying and sobbing’.
‘She still had her uniform on,’ he said. Her thighs were bruised and scuffed but when he asked her if she had been raped she didn’t reply. ‘She just cried and she begged me not to tell anybody, not to say anything,’ he said.
They grew apart after that but months later it was rumoured Ann was pregnant. However, she denied it when he asked her about it.
He told of his shock when he was told Ann was found semi-conscious by three passing schoolboys, with her dead baby lying beside the grotto that adjoined Granard’s Catholic Church. She died later in hospital.
Following Ann’s funeral, two of her friends discovered two letters under her bed. One had the name ‘Ricky’ on it and the other was blank. According to one of the friends it read: ‘If I’m not dead by the 31st of January, I’m going to kill myself anyway.’
Later, the letter to Mr McDonnell was delivered to him by one of Ann’s family. He said: ‘I only read the letter once. But the gist of the letter was, how much that Ann had loved me, and how sorry she was for doing what she was going to do.
‘She had never meant to hurt me, that she had loved me, that the reason she was doing it was that nobody would believe I was the father of that child.’
He added: ‘It was obvious what she was going to do. She went up to the palms, to the grotto, to have that baby. Ann wasn’t stupid. She could have walked into any place, anywhere in Granard, and said, “I’m having a baby”, and they would have called her an ambulance. Anybody would have done that. Anybody that’s logical would have done that. But she didn’t.
‘She went to the grotto. And she done that for a reason. That isn’t an accident. This was not about her going off somewhere quiet on her own. That is not Ann Lovett. That’s not Ann. Ann could have gone to any woman in Granard and they would have got her help.
‘So to me, this was a protest on her behalf. That’s what I feel. I don’t believe any other thing. Ann just wasn’t like that. She could have got help anywhere and she would have got plenty of help.
‘This is well out of her character to do this. In the letter, she said she was sorry for what she was going to do. None of it adds up. I knew Ann better than anybody. And no way would she have gone to the palms on her own, to have a baby, because she could have asked anybody for help. Anybody! And they would have helped. It’s just unbelievable.’
Mr McDonnell alleges that shortly after he read the letters, Fr John Quinn, the Catholic curate, one of two priests in the parish at the time, arrived at the home he was staying in, demanding to see the letter.
The two went into the living room where Fr Quinn is said to have read the letter twice. Mr McDonnell recalls: ‘Then he turned round and put it into my hand, and said: “Burn that letter. Because that’s going to cause so much trouble. It’ll destroy the town,” he said. And I burned it.’
The next day Mr McDonnell said Fr Quinn came down to see him again and said Bishop Colm O’Reilly in Longford wanted to see him: ‘He said the bishop wanted to hear my story. I’m not a religious person. I thought it was very odd, but I knew it was very serious as well.’
The bishop allegedly wanted to know what Mr McDonnell had told the gardaí and he repeated everything including the bruises. He said that there was ‘some kind of discussion at the end of it’. Fr Quinn was there. ‘I was sitting there at the table as well. I just wasn’t listening to them. I was miles away. The bishop told me he was swearing me to a vow of silence. And that I would have to kiss the seal of St Peter and he held out his hand with his bishop’s ring. I was never to breathe a word of it again, he said.’
The case had had massive repercussions for Mr McDonnell.
He describes developing a drinking problem for many years until he gave up alcohol ten years ago. His estranged daughter also spoke out on social media yesterday about how the secrecy of the case affected her life. The MoS attempted to contact Bishop Reilly and Fr Quiin for comment yesterday.
Approached in his parish in Gortletteragh, Co. Leitrim, Fr Quinn said: ‘I must refer you to my namesake Noel Quinn, in Mohill, his offices open at 9am on Monday morning,’ before closing the door.
Fr Quinn’s solicitors told the Irish Times: ‘Our client has no knowledge of a letter written by the late Ann Lovett and accordingly did not request to see such a letter. . . our client did not drive Mr McDonnell to see Bishop O’Reilly and this meeting did not take place with Bishop O’Reilly, and the suggestion by Mr McDonnell that he was requested to swear an oath of secrecy about a statement which is on the Garda file
‘Burn that letter. It will cause so much trouble’
and therefore on the record is absurd and erroneous.’
The former Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, Colm O’Reilly, resigned in 2013 as he had reached the age of 75.
The Irish Times put a number of questions to him. Now Bishop Emeritus, he issued a statement via the Catholic Communications Office.
‘Bishop O’Reilly has never met or communicated with Mr Richard McDonnell. Bishop O’Reilly has never asked anyone to meet or communicate with Mr McDonnell on his behalf.’
But Micheál Martin told the MoS last night that church authorities must fully cooperate with attempts to find out what happened.
The FF leader said: ‘This is a heartbreaking human story where we learn more than we, or I at least, ever knew courtesy of brilliant journalism.’
Mr Martin expressed his concern over ‘the amount of still unanswered questions’.
He said: ‘It is important to our society and all involved that we come to a clear and a proper understanding of how such terrible events occurred and what events did occur.
‘To bring some form of closure for those involved and that we all may learn lessons, there should be full and complete transparency for those involved – they should make whatever information they have readily available and that includes any church authorities involved in this case’.