Concern over convicted paedophile priest living near school

SUPPORTERS of sex abuse survivors have expressed concern that a former Catholic priest convicted of molesting nine children is living within five minutes’ walk of a school.

Former Dominican priest Vincent Mercer has been living at his order’s Black Abbey priory in Kilkenny city since he walked free from court with a suspended sentence in 2005.

Local people were shocked when his whereabouts were revealed on radio station KCLR FM yesterday, particularly as there is a CBS boys school five minutes’ walk away and a Loreto girls school also nearby.

Catherine Twomey, manager of the Kilkenny Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre, said the decision to house Mercer at the Abbey was of concern given its proximity to schools.

“He has to be housed somewhere but can the order give us an assurance that this person has no access to young people? That would be a huge concern for us.

“If they can guarantee us that they are monitoring this person then we have to work with that but the problem at the moment is that it’s very hard to believe what the Church is saying when all of the revelations show how they didn’t deal properly with abusers.”

Mercer’s abuse was revealed when the former headmaster of Newbridge College was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail in 2003 for the abuse of a boy at the school in the 1970s.

The now 63-year-old was subsequently tried and convicted in 2005 of the abuse of eight other boys at the school and a Dominican-run holiday camp but he got a three-year suspended sentence after evidence was given that he had received therapy and was at low risk of reoffending.

The Dominicans said yesterday they had never tried to hide the fact that Mercer was living in the Black Abbey and that there had been no incident to give cause for concern since he moved there.

Spokesman Fr Bernard Treacy told the Irish Examiner: “He is very closely monitored. For example, if he wants to go somewhere, he must say why and get permission to leave the abbey.”

He said the arrangement continued to be closely monitored but the order had limited options for housing someone such as Vincent Mercer. “We don’t have an isolated place in the countryside that we could use in this type of situation.”

KCLR presenter Sue Nunn said the feedback from listeners showed people were anxious about Mercer’s presence at the abbey.

“We’re not trying to provoke a reaction but we gave this a lot of thought and decided that if you sit on this kind of information then you are colluding in the silence.”

* The Kilkenny Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre can be contacted at 1800 478478.