Priest felt confusion and guilt over sex, court told

A former Catholic archbishop has told the High Court he had an “inappropriate” sexual relationship with a woman in Nigeria which began in 1989 when she was aged 20 and he was 40.

Tipperary-born Richard Burke, aged 66, was ordained a priest in 1975. He said he felt “uneasy” by the demeanour of then 20-year-old Dolores Atwood, which “gave an impression of being flirtatious”, when she came unexpectedly to his apartment on a Sunday afternoon in Warri City in Nigeria in September or October 1989.

They went to his bedroom where they “made love, including full sexual intercourse”. He later felt a mix of confusion and guilt, knew what had happened was wrong; believed she was falling in love with him; and told her he was leaving for Ireland in spring 1990, he outlined to the court, where he allege he was defamed in the May 2011 Prime Time Investigates: Mission to Prey programme. He alleges it wrongly depicted him as a paedophile. RTÉ denies defamation.

The sexual relationship was inappropriate because he was a priest with a commitment to celibacy, he said. Asked by Paul O’Higgins, counsel for RTÉ, was there any other reason, he said it was also inappropriate because he was twice her age.

Under cross-examination by Mr O’Higgins, he said he first met Ms Atwood two years earlier. There was no intimacy of any description between them before autumn 1989 and he had not had sexual thoughts about her, he said. He had “genuinely believed” she was born in 1968 but later learned it was August 1969.

Mr Burke told his counsel, Jack Fitzgerald, that Ms Atwood sought €200,000 from him in 2009 after he paid her €176,000 over a number of years. When he told her he could not get the money, she asked him, and he agreed, to have sex with her in a hotel in Halifax, Canada, he said.

He felt “terrorised” by Ms Atwood and feared she would disclose their sexual relationship. He was appointed a bishop in Nigeria in 1996 and archbishop in December 2007.

After having sex with Ms Atwood in autumn 1989, they had sex three more times before he returned to Ireland in spring 1990 and, while there, letters passed between them.

Ms Atwood later married and moved to Canada in about 1995 and he had some contact with her between 1996 and 2003. In 2003, she phoned asking him to spend three nights with her in a hotel in Lagos and give her $4,000, which he did, he said.

Between 2003 and 2005, there was increasing phone contact between them. He was “devastated” to later learn Ms Atwood had also phoned his brother in Tipperary and sister in Dublin.

He said Ms Atwood later phoned him seeking money and he met her in Halifax airport, Nova Scotia, in October 2007 and gave her a bank draft for €26,000. He was “incredibly worried” that if he did not hand over the money she would reveal they had an intimate relationship.

In a call about 11pm on November 7, 2007, he said she subjected him to a “tirade of abuse” for three hours, during which Ms Atwood said, for the first time: “You’re a paedophile”, he claimed.

Rather than give her €10,000 a year for five years, “an eternity of prolonging this nightmare”, he decided to give her €50,000 in one payment intended to end this. After about a month, Ms Atwood phoned again demanding €100,000. He gave her this in London afterraising the money partly from his own and partly from diocesan funds.

The case continues.