'He's pure evil': Bill Kenneally survivor recounts decades of trauma and the struggle for justice
Survivor Simon O’Toole (pictured) first came forward in 2013 but was not heard by investigating gardaí until 2018.
For Simon O’Toole, time has not softened his view of the man who made his childhood a living hell.
Of Bill Kenneally, the 75-year-old convicted paedophile, he says simply: “He’s pure evil.”
Simon, now aged 59, first came forward in 2013 but was not heard by investigating gardaí until 2018. His testimony was not taken into account before Kenneally's second criminal trial.
At that time he had been living in America for more than 30 years, chased into leaving the country by the memories of the abuse he suffered at the hands of Ireland’s most prolific child sex offender.
He tells the of first becoming aware of Kenneally when he was about 11 years of age in 1977 via the basketball club he was a member of.
Kenneally had set up the Thomas Francis Meaghers club alongside his cousin, former Fianna Fáil TD and minister Brendan Kenneally, in Waterford City in 1973. He was a coach when Simon first came to his attention.
“There was the blue van that he’d drive older guys, 14 or so, around in. I joined in with the lads, it started off after practice when he’d bring us for chips and burgers in Tramore at first. Then he’d give us money, it could be five pounds,” he says.
“Then he would get a bit touchy feely, and then he’d use alcohol. I can’t remember exactly the first time anything happened, but I know I was the last one to go home, and I’d probably had two bottles of beer, and at that age it kind of went to your head.
"And he’d start making moves and this and that, and, you know, you just don’t realise what’s going on.
Simon recalls the intimidation factor represented by the political power behind the Kenneally name in the region.
Bill Kenneally’s grandfather William had been a TD in Waterford from the early 50s. His son Billy, Bill’s uncle and Brendan’s father, succeeded him in Dail Eireann from the 60s to the 80s.
The family represented Fianna Fáil royalty in the area.
“They were a very powerful family, like a miniature Kennedy family. And you were at a time where people didn’t talk about this type of stuff. The word paedophile wasn’t used,” he says.
He describes how the abuse continued and grew more and more severe in nature, always backed up with threats of disclosure, of humiliation.
“He’d say, if you don’t do more I’ll tell people about you, and everybody’s going to think you’re gay. He’d say if we accused him he’d deny it and you’d end up going off to a reformatory school,” Simon says.
“You get to the stage where you’re being tied up, hogtied, stripped and tied from a tree, dangling, burned with cigarettes, polaroids taken.
"One night, I was 12 or maybe 13, he said I’m gonna leave you here, and he got in the car and he was gone. It might have been a few minutes but it felt like fucking hours.”
“He’d have porn movies on up in his house, he’d always keep one or two boys behind, then he’d bring out his goody bag with the polaroid camera and the rope. He’d say ‘everybody will see these if you say anything’.
"What he did with the photos I don’t know, I figured he was trading them.”
Eventually, in Simon’s words, he grew to be “too old for him”, and Kenneally moved on to fresh victims. But the damage was done.
“By then I knew what drink could do with me. I started failing at school. I couldn’t concentrate. I’d get into a lot of fights, two or three fellas at a time. I was afraid of people ever knowing me. Better than the pain I was dealing with.
"People thought I was a headcase. That was the way I wanted it.”
Simon was one of eight children, a family with a lot going on.
“I didn’t know what to say to anyone, it was five years of hell, between teachers beating you at school and the rest.
"I went from a caring kid to just slowly over time having the emotions drained out of me.”
Eventually he left Ireland for America, aged just 20. He lived all over the American North East, married and had two children. Stayed 32 years. But his past travelled with him.
“It was eating me alive, I had constant flashbacks coming back, constant nightmares. They’d go away for a while and then come back, and I was almost drinking myself to death.”
He was home in Waterford in 2013 around the time of Bill Kenneally’s arrest, the time when victims were starting to come forward.
“And people knew I’d played basketball, and they wanted to know if anything had happened to me. And I was in denial. I didn’t even want to leave the house to go to the pub anymore.
"And then I knew I had to do something or it would kill me,” Simon says.
The first report he made to the gardaí in 2013 is a source of distinct discontentment still. He was informed that the gardaí “had enough people” to be going on with in the criminal case, they’d be in touch if they needed him.
The complaint was never processed, and he wasn’t contacted again. It would be another five years before his story was finally officially heard as part of Kenneally’s criminal prosecution.
“I never heard from them again the first time, and it sent me fucking loopy again. Here I am ready to pour out my guts, and they tell me to get lost. And I was convinced they were still trying to downplay it because of who the (Kenneally) family was.”
The gardaí have since acknowledged that Simon’s story should have been heard at the time rather than lost in the ether, and should have formed part of Kenneally’s first prosecution in 2016, rather than the second in 2023.
These days Simon is back living in Ireland once more. Describing having “lived in a prison in my own head for 40 years”, he says that with counselling “the memories are there, but the nightmares are disappearing”.
“I just want my life back.”
“I’m back eight years now and it has been a rollercoaster. But I’m glad I survived it. The only other way was to be dead.”
Today the report of the South East Commission into the case of Bill Kenneally, and how the State had failed its most vulnerable citizens, was published.
Unusually, Bill Kenneally gave testimony to the Commission in March 2024. An appearance that will not be soon forgotten by those present, he showed no remorse for what he had done, and seemed to be of the opinion that his opinions were just as much to blame as he was.
“He is pure evil. He thought he was funny. The stupid giggle. I told him in court, you are scum. You’re going to be locked up like a caged animal,” Simon says.
His opinion of official Ireland, and how it contrived to let Kenneally off the hook in 1987 when gardaí were fully aware of the crimes the man had been committing, is no better.
“They are all as bad. They said we’ll keep this wrapped up, we’ll shut it up as long as we can.”
- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.
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