Ex-priest guilty of indecent assaults on pupil

A former priest who wrote to the Pope asking to be laicised because of his history of “abusing young boys” has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s while the priest worked as a choirmaster and music teacher.

Henry Moloney, aged 77, of Kimmage Manor, Dublin, was found guilty last night, on the unanimous verdicts of a jury, of seven counts of indecent assault, all of which took place within one school year in the 1980s.

He will be sentenced on December 15, following the preparation of a victim impact report, and has been remanded on bail.

Moloney had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The injured party told Clonmel Circuit Court last week the abuse started within a week or two of the start of a school year in the 1980s at Rockwell College after Fr Moloney, as he was then, asked him to join the choir.

Moloney was choirmaster and played the organ in the school’s chapel. The first incident was in the organ gallery, the victim said.

In his closing speech yesterday, David Humphreys, prosecuting, said the victim did not tell his wife about the abuse for years.

“It also took Henry Moloney a long time to talk about these matters,” Mr Humphreys said. “It wasn’t until 45 years later, after he started his abuse of young boys, that he wrote to the Pope and told the Pope about it.”

He quoted from Moloney’s letter of 2014, which stated: “I have greatly sinned over 10 years, from 1969 to 1979 in my abusing young boys.”

It went on to say that “from 1980 to 1991 there were sporadic betrayals”.

Patrick Gageby, defending, said the letter to Pope Francis in which he “has admitted sexually abusing young boys and boys in his care” did not mean this particular case was proven.

Judge Thomas Teehan also referred in his charge to the jury to Moloney’s 2014 letter to Pope Francis, “seeking laicisation and acknowledging that he had committed, in the past, breaches of trust whereby boys were entrusted to his care and he sexually abused them”.