'It was absolutely localised State collusion': Bill Kenneally abuse survivors speak out

Jason Clancy, Barry Murphy, Colin Power , Kevin Keating, and Paul Walsh outside Buswells Hotel on Tuesday. Picture: Stephen Collins/Collins

Survivors of child sex abuser Bill Kenneally have decried the derelictions of duty by State agencies revealed in a new report, claiming if they hadn’t occurred “we wouldn’t be here today”.

The final report of the South East Commission of Investigation into how the case of Kenneally was handled by organs of the State concluded that some of those bodies, notably An Garda Síochána, had handled revelations regarding the paedophile’s abuses in the 1980s very poorly.

In particular, the report of former High Court Justice Michael White described the actions and non-actions of acting chief superintendent for Waterford Sean Cashman from December 1987 — when he heard admissions of guilt from Kenneally and never instigated a criminal investigation against him — as “unprofessional, rushed, and inappropriate”.

The report also details how a 14-year-old boy entered Waterford Garda Station in 1985 to tell gardaí he had been abused by Kenneally, only to be sent away and to return with an adult in attendance.

“I think that it was absolutely localised State collusion,” survivor Jason Clancy told media in Dublin after the report was published.

Of the boy making his allegation in 1985, Mr Clancy said: “The moment they heard Bill Kenneally’s name they ushered him out.”

“If An Garda Síochána at that point has brought that boy home and spoken to his parents, as [Kenneally] said himself, if they’d searched his house they’d have found naked photos, the mechanism he used to hang us from ceilings, all of his equipment, and none of us would be here today,” he said, adding “they should all hang their heads in shame”.

His fellow survivor Colin Power was similarly scathing regarding then Superintendent Cashman.

“The most senior garda in Waterford was told about this in 1987,” he said. “He brought him into the station, he heard admissions from him, and he let the man walk. And the abuse didn’t stop there. 

"That’s the seriousness of this. Lives were ruined. In 1985, if things were handled properly, he could have been stopped two years earlier than that. This guy was allowed abuse children, even though people went to the gardaí about him.”