Girls making their first confession were sexually abused by a priest who afterwards put his hand on their heads and said: “Your sins are forgiven.”

A 79-year-old priest who got a suspended jail term last month for sexually assaulting a girl throughout her First Confession in West Cork pleaded guilty yesterday to carrying out similar assaults on three other girls in the mid-1970s.

A RETIRED priest from the Diocese of Cloyne has been charged with indecently assaulting two women in separate incidents, in the early 1980s.