Tributes paid to retired bishop on episcopal ordination anniversary

Tributes have been paid to Emeritus Bishop John Buckley, who says he wants no fuss as he marks the 40th anniversary of his episcopal ordination this week.

The Bishop of Cork and Ross, Bishop Fintan Gavin, said since his retirement in 2019, his predecessor has continued and expanded his pastoral work, and is still a great presence in the diocese.

“I’m grateful to Bishop John for all his kindness and support to me since I came to Cork,  and I congratulate him on his 40 years of episcopal ministry. I wish him many more years of health and happiness,” Bishop Gavin said.

Bishop Buckley, 84, was born in Inchigeela, West Cork, and studied for the priesthood at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, before being ordained a priest in 1965.

Low-key and a sportsman, he taught on the staff of St Finbarr’s College, Farranferris, until he became its president in 1975. He was parish priest of Turner’s Cross parish for a year,  before he was ordained Titular Bishop of Leptis Magna and Auxiliary Bishop of Cork and Ross in 1984.

He became the diocesan administrator following the death of Bishop Michael Murphy in October 1996, and the Holy See announced his appointment as Bishop of Cork and Ross in December 1997.

He was installed as bishop at the city’s Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne on February 8, 1998, and went on to minister to the diocese for another two decades.

On November 2, 2014, he reached the age at which serving diocesan bishops are required by Church law to submit their resignation to the Pope.

However, it was five years before Pope Francis accepted his resignation — on April 8, 2019 — at which point Bishop Fintan Gavin was announced to be his successor.

On Monday, Bishop Buckley reached the 40th anniversary of his ordination as auxiliary bishop, prompting the special tribute from Bishop Gavin.

It is understood the diocese plans to mark the milestone in a few weeks, but with a low-key event in keeping with Bishop Buckley's wishes.

Since his retirement in 2019, Bishop Buckley has continued his pastoral work across the diocese, including hospital visitations and regular attendance at removals and funerals.

He has also continued to serve the diocese by conferring Confirmation on some of the young people of the parishes, most recently in Clonakilty this week.

Russia's Head Bishop Had Some Truly Unnerving Words For Putin After The President Was Sworn In

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church had some chilling comments for Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, when blessing the president for his fifth term in office.

In a televised service, the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow read a passage from the bible to show the church’s support for the presidency – and then expressed hope that Putin would rule until the end of the century...

According to a translation from a former adviser to the Ukrainian government, Anton Gerashchenko, the patriarch reportedly said: “May God bless you so that the end of the century means the end of your time in power.

“You have everything you need to serve the country long and successfully.”

Putin is 71 and has already been in power for a quarter of a century.

Tuesday’s ceremony – which followed Russia’s presidential election – means he will now be in office until his 77th birthday.

The patriarch himself has been in his role since 2009 and is a close ally of the president.

And, according to a translation in the New York Times, the bishop made an apparent reference to the ongoing Ukraine war, too.

He reportedly said: “The head of state must sometimes make fateful and fearsome decisions.

“And if such a decision is not made, the consequences can be extremely dangerous for the people and the state.

“But these decisions are almost always associated with victims.”

Others claimed the patriarch welcomed Putin to the Kremlin’s Cathedral of Annunciation on Tuesday by accidentally calling the president “Your Highness”.

Other translations of Putin’s inauguration – including from the Financial Times’ Max Seddon – also suggested the Patriarch compared the president to the medieval ruler of Alexander Nevsky who was known for his military victories.

Putin, in the meantime, seemed to just look on while receiving this blessing, occasionally bowing or drawing a cross over himself.

New Bishop of Clifton is ordained

A new Catholic Bishop has been ordained in Bristol.

Bishop Bosco MacDonald has taken over from Declan Lang, the Bishop of Clifton. 

After 23 years in the role he is retiring for health reasons.

More than 1,000 people gathered at Clifton Cathedral, including a representative of the Pope.

Bishop MacDonald said it is a "huge honour" and "responsibility".

The Clifton Catholic Diocese comprises of four counties: Somerset, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol.

"I've lived here all of my life - the West Country is something very close to my heart," he said.

"I'm very glad to be here and honoured to be chosen as a bishop of this area.

"It is a huge responsibility."

"It's somewhat of a surprise and a huge honour and something that is very humbling as well to think that the holy father thought of me and chose me as the tenth bishop of Clifton," he added.

Defrocked Donegal priest jailed for 'sustained' sexual abuse of young victim

Former priest Eamonn Crossan has been jailed for the sexual abuse of a young boy in County Donegal.

Defrocked cleric Crossan, now aged 73, was handed a five-year prison sentence, with the final 12 months suspended, when he appeared before Letterkenny Circuit Court on Wednesday morning. Crossan was last week told by the courageous victim to 'rot in hell'.

Crossan, a native of Letterkenny, appeared via video link from Midlands Prison in Portlaoise, where he is in custody and which was given as his current address.

Appearing from video link booth 3, Crossan showed little emotion as Judge John Aylmer passed sentencing.

The victim was in court accompanied by his wife and flanked by two detectives.

Crossan pleaded guilty to seven counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault, which were representative of 52 counts of such offending in a period spanning March 1987 and December 1992 when the victim was aged between 10 and 15.

Judge Aylmer said that the evidence established that the victim was indecently or sexually assaulted “in a sustained manner on a weekly basis over a six-year period”.

At the time, Crossan was in a position of authority as a parish priest and the offending represented “a very grave breach of trust”, Judge Aylmer said.

The most serious offences regularly involved the violation of the male victim, who was taken into Crossan's bed and had his genitals fondled as the disgraced priest masturbated.

Monaghan ex-soldier wants uniform church flag rules

A retired Irish soldier from County Monaghan has spoken off his disappointment that the national flag draped on the coffin of his comrade was ordered to be removed by a priest before funeral mass. 

James, and many of military colleagues attended the funeral of their friend in County Meath last week and is customary for servicemen, the tricolour was placed on the coffin of the deceased.

The celebrant of the funeral mass asked that the flag be removed before the coffin was brought into the church causing offence and upset among the military gathered. 

The priest's actions are in contravention of Conference of Bishops guidelines, which gives the Church's blessing to allow ex-service personnel to have the tricolour on their coffins.

The priest has since issued a statement to the Joe Finnegan Show, which first broke the story about flag-placing regulations last summer. 

The priest said he "very much regretted" the move and it was "certainly not his intention to cause upset". 

Ex-defence forces member James said the Bishop's blessing must be communicated at parish level to prevent the scenario from happening at another colleague's funeral: "I served under the UN as a young soldier and grew up in the military," James told the JF Show, "The flag means everything to me. Absolutely everything to me. I'd like to see families I know getting the flag. It's an honour, an honour to get the flag draped on your coffin when you eventually do pass away. It's an absolute honour. What's wrong is it's just not getting passed down from the hierarchy to priests and different locations so that every time we go to do a military funeral there's a different story."

Belfast Church 'regrets distress caused by' film event after accusations of 'sacrilege'

A Belfast catholic church has said it "regrets the distress caused" by the screening of Young Frankenstein for a City Centre festival following accusations of "sacrilege".

St Patrick's Church on Donegall Street hosted an event as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival on Tuesday, May 7, where it put on a screening of the Mel Brooks classic film starring Gene Wilder.

The church has a long history of hosting community events with music concerts, art exhibitions and film screenings being held there in the past.

However, following the showing of Young Frankenstein the church received some backlash online with some people accusing it of "sacrilege" and that a church should not be used for such an event.

There were also others who believed that the film event was a great idea and positive way of engaging with the local community and similar events should be encouraged.

A spokesperson from St Patrick's Parish said: "St Patrick’s Church, located within the heart of the City of Belfast, provides for the ongoing pastoral and sacramental needs of its parishioners, with the first church opened on this site in 1815.

"Across the years, this beautiful and historic church has been a sanctuary of welcome for all with the celebration of sacraments, the opportunity to visit and pray throughout the day and in its social and cultural engagement with the wider community.

"Following in this rich tradition and heritage, St Patrick’s Parish has hosted numerous events including musical concerts as well as exhibitions of art, film and poetry and remains firmly committed to engaging with the religious, social and cultural life of the City of Belfast in which it is situated.

"The Parish acknowledges that the decision to screen a movie within St Patrick’s Church this year as part of the Cathedral Quarter Festival has generated concerns and caused upset for some individuals. This was not the intention of the Parish. St Patrick’s Parish takes these concerns seriously, regrets the distress that the decision to screen a movie has caused, and will review the nature of such cultural engagement in future years."

‘It wasn’t a big deal’: secret deposition reveals how a child molester priest was shielded by his church

Longtime New Orleans Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker received a special honor from the Vatican nearly 25 years ago despite having confessed to molesting children. 

Then, for another two decades, church leaders in the city strategically shielded him from law enforcement and media exposure – while also providing him with financial support ranging from paid limousine rides and therapeutic massages to full retirement benefits, according to his own, previously unreported testimony.

A sworn deposition Hecker gave in private in 2020 shows exactly how high-placed Catholic church officials in New Orleans let him keep his elevated position for years, even after they had been advised to oust him from the clergy and – much later – publicly acknowledged that he was a child predator.

“It wasn’t a big deal in those days,” Hecker said at the deposition about how his archdiocese coddled him despite his acknowledged abuse of children.

The scale of the cover-up shocks the conscience. As Hecker walked into New Orleans’ historic St Louis Cathedral in early January 2000 to receive the honorary, Vatican-bestowed title of monsignor, he had already confessed to molesting children he met through his ministry.

Hecker by then had been flown out of town and driven by limousine to a psychiatric facility, which diagnosed him as an inveterate pedophile. He had been forced to take a months-long sabbatical – which was to begin the week after his promotional ceremony, at a cost to the archdiocese of $6,000. And he had already spoken to the archbishop of New Orleans at the time and his predecessor about the allegations against him.

Hecker admitted that the archbishop who presided over his 2000 promotion – the late Francis Bible Schulte – told him he regretted sending his name to his superiors in Rome to be exalted, shortly before the priest confessed to being a serial child abuser.

“Archbishop Schulte told me – he said – ‘If I had known of this, I would not have sent in for your promotion,’” Hecker testified. “‘I would not have asked for you to be a monsignor.’”

But nothing was done.

To borrow one of Hecker’s favorite words when discussing his past, Schulte and his colleagues “evidently” got over it.

First, they went through with conferring the distinction of monsignor upon Hecker, with approval from the then pope, John Paul II. And then Schulte’s successors as archbishop – Alfred Hughes and the present incumbent, Gregory Aymond – ignored a previously hidden recommendation from an official review board calling on them to laicize Hecker, which would have expelled him from the priesthood.

As a result, Hecker avoided being publicly exposed as a predator for nearly two decades. He was also able to collect tens of thousands of dollars in assistance from the second-oldest US archdiocese before at last facing a meaningful consequence: a grand jury indictment in September of last year that charged him with child rape, kidnapping and other crimes.

According to a bombshell search warrant Louisiana state police troopers served on the church in late April, the investigation which produced those charges has evolved into an inquiry over whether members of the archdiocese – in Hecker’s case and others – operated as a child sex-trafficking ring responsible for “widespread sexual abuse of minors dating back decades” that was “covered up and not reported to law enforcement”.

During the 2020 deposition, an attorney for a number of Hecker’s abuse accusers asked the priest if he felt fortunate that he had managed to elude being criminally charged for so long after the truth had started to trickle out. Hecker replied: “I don’t think that was even thought about at the time.”

The eight-and-a-half-hour deposition offers the most complete accounting yet of the lengths to which an organization serving a region with about a half-million Catholics went to shelter Hecker. He gave the testimony for a civil lawsuit seeking damages from him and the archdiocese.

The plaintiff, Aaron Hebert, has publicly alleged he was an underage altar boy at a church in Gretna, Louisiana, in the late 1960s when Hecker lined him and other children up against a wall, ordered them to drop their pants and fondled their genitals. A May 2020 bankruptcy protection filing by the archdiocese put a halt to a wave of abuse-related lawsuits including Hebert’s, but his legal team, led by Richard Trahant, received special permission to privately question Hecker under oath.

Lawyers for the archdiocese have repeatedly gone to court to oppose public access to that deposition. But the Guardian and New Orleans’ CBS affiliate, WWL Louisiana, collaborated to obtain video of Hecker’s testimony and hundreds of pages of evidentiary exhibits.

The session, carried out over two days in December 2020, provides an unprecedented look at how Hecker, now 92, evaded accountability for so long. It comes as he and his accusers wait to see whether a judge agrees with a psychiatric opinion that Hecker is not mentally competent to stand trial.

Hecker’s testimony was enlightening even as he avoided answering many questions by invoking his rights against self-incrimination under the constitution’s fifth amendment. He did so a staggering 117 times – or about once every four minutes – in a sign of concern that eventually law enforcement could use his answers against him.

Neither the attorneys for Hecker nor the plaintiff commented on the deposition.

In written answers to detailed questions, an archdiocesan spokesperson said the church stood by how Aymond handled complaints against Hecker and referred questions about his predecessors to living members of their former administrations.

The church also maintained that it properly reported Hecker to law enforcement and district attorneys across south-east Louisiana, despite the fact that a 2002 letter that notified New Orleans police about him failed to mention his confession three years earlier, among other omissions.

A long history of molestation allegations

The deposition covered allegations dating back to the 1960s, from more than a dozen accusers. Yet it is unclear how many more people have claims against Hecker, including in the archdiocesan bankruptcy case. When Trahant asked “You have committed so many sexual felonies against children that you can’t remember them all, correct?”, Hecker pleaded the fifth amendment.

For decades, Hecker testified, his superiors did not take victims or their advocates seriously, even in the rare instances when they promised a vigorous investigation.

He said the then archbishop of New Orleans, Philip Hannan, confronted Hecker in 1988 with allegations from the parents of a boy who said he was molested in the late 1970s. Hannan then flew Hecker to a paid sabbatical in New York City, church documents show. There, Hecker took classes at Fordham University while he lived and worked at a Bronx church, St Mary’s.

Church records show presented at the deposition show that a high-ranking New York archdiocese official wrote to Hannan asking him to vouch for Hecker.

Hannan wrote back that Hecker had permission to be in New York – without mentioning allegations of child sexual abuse.

“It wasn’t a big deal in those days,” Hecker testified.

That comment prompted his criminal defense attorney, Eugene Redmann, to exclaim: “Wow!”

Another complaint in 1996 by the mother of three boys prompted then archbishop Schulte’s top aide to confront Hecker, who admitted taking showers, swimming in the nude and sleeping in the same bed as the woman’s sons, according to documents referenced in the deposition. Yet Hecker insisted he stopped short of inappropriate contact with any of those children, and the archdiocese dismissed the complaint as unsubstantiated.

‘I did a good job’

A fresh complaint was filed against Hecker in October 1999, about a month after Schulte announced that Hecker would be promoted to monsignor the following year. On 4 November, Hecker provided a typed statement to the archdiocese in which he acknowledged “overtly sexual acts” with, or harassment of, multiple children.

Soon after, Hecker said a limousine driver who picked him up from the airport delivered him to a psychiatric clinic near Philadelphia, where he was evaluated over the course of a few days. The clinic concluded that Hecker was a pedophile who “takes little responsibility for his behavior” and recommended he refrain from ministering to “children, adolescents or other vulnerable individuals”.

In the deposition, Hecker took pains to avoid admitting his official diagnosis. Trahant established that the archdiocese withheld Hecker’s treatment records for the session. But Trahant had medical insurance coding records – and he directed Hecker to read the code for his diagnosis as well as to say what it meant.

Hecker balked. He told his attorney, “This seems like a trap,” before finally acknowledging the numerical code referred to pedophilia.

He returned from receiving his diagnosis, accepted his promotion to monsignor, then went on another forced sabbatical – this time to San Antonio, Texas. To do so, he had to resign his position as pastor from a church in Terrytown, Louisiana.

In a letter to congregants, he attributed the break to physical fatigue and “aging”.

Thomas Rodi – now the archbishop of Mobile, Alabama, at the time an aide to Schulte – signed an invoice authorizing a $6,000 payment to cover the sabbatical. Deposition records suggest at least some of that money went to cover $35-an-hour therapeutic massages, although Hecker denied getting more than one.

When Hecker returned, Schulte assigned him to St Charles Borromeo church in Destrehan, Louisiana, which has a grammar school attached. Copied on the letter informing Hecker of his new assignment are Rodi and Aymond, then senior Schulte lieutenants, now among the highest-ranking Catholic church officials along the US’s Gulf coast.

Rodi didn’t respond to a request for comment. An archdiocesan spokesperson said Aymond, then a vicar general and auxiliary bishop, had no administrative role overseeing Hecker at the time.

Hecker at his deposition said they didn’t limit his authority at St Charles Borromeo, but the pastor there was supposed to keep an eye on him. Pressed on whether the pastor could effectively do that, Hecker said: “Frankly, obviously he couldn’t watch me … every moment. No.”

Hecker defended the archdiocese’s decision to let him resume his clerical career despite his confession and two abuse-related sabbaticals.

“You know, like, I did a good job,” Hecker said. “Any time I was asked to do something, you know, I cooperated and so on.”

Keeping it quiet

Hecker retired with full benefits – providing him everything from housing and insurance to retirement income – in 2002, just when a clerical abuse and cover-up scandal in Boston hit fever pitch.

New Orleans’ archbishop at the time, Alfred Hughes, had come from Boston – an attorney general’s report published later said he helped “perpetuate a practice of utmost secrecy and confidentiality with respect to the problem” of clerical abuse there.

A New Orleans review board advising Hughes on managing fallout from the Boston crisis urged him to laicize Hecker, according to documents provided for the priest’s deposition.

Laicization would have ejected Hecker from the clergy and demoted him to a member of the laity. At his deposition, he admitted he would probably have forfeited lucrative retirement benefits if Hughes had followed that recommendation, which has never before been reported and which Hecker said he only learned about from Trahant’s questioning.

But Hughes ignored that recommendation. Instead he wrote to Hecker to order him not to dress as a priest or celebrate masses in public. Hecker showed his displeasure in a letter of his own.

“If I never dress as a priest, fellow priests and family members will almost certainly talk about it and before long the word would be out,” Hecker wrote.

The archbishop said he would be “happy” for Hecker to work as a volunteer at the archdiocesan archives, where workers could “dress informally”. That way, no one would find it odd Hecker was not dressing as a priest any more.

The late monsignor Raymond Hebert, who once served as the archdiocese’s director of clergy, put it even more pointedly.

“Our only concern is that someone in [Hecker’s] past might decide to go public,” Hebert wrote to another top Hughes aide in 2000.

Hecker confirmed to Trahant that the archdiocese by then was invested in keeping his misdeeds – whether acknowledged or alleged – under wraps.

“We all, you know, didn’t want big publicity or anything,” Hecker said. “Oh, yes.”

As an example, Trahant called attention to a 2002 letter that attorneys for the archdiocese – who reviewed personnel files – wrote to New Orleans police, ostensibly to notify officers of accusations against Hecker.

But that letter only mentioned a single person’s allegations, including a purported, out-of-state crime that happened outside the agency’s jurisdiction. The letter made no mention of Hecker confessing to several abusive acts. Police made no move against him.

An archdiocesan spokesperson said: “Archbishop Hughes is responsible for reporting Mr Hecker to law enforcement,” and referred questions to the retired archbishop emeritus. Hughes did not respond to requests for comment.

What Aymond knew

Aymond succeeded Hughes as archbishop in 2009. Though the church continued to suppress the reason for Hecker’s retirement seven years earlier, allegations flowed in.

A 2011 memo written by a nun serving as Aymond’s abuse victims assistance coordinator informed the archbishop that “Larry” – Hecker’s nickname – “was known among … boys as a predator.” The memo told Aymond that Hecker spoke of wanting “to put the past behind him” in a conversation with Hebert in 1996, but he “nevertheless continued to perpetrate through 1997”.

No additional details are available in the deposition exhibits. And the archdiocese said it had no further details about those allegations.

But the memo contradicts repeated claims that Hecker had stopped abusing in the 1980s – assertions he made to the archdiocese and to the psychiatric facility that diagnosed him with pedophilia.

At Hecker’s deposition, Trahant asked if he knew the archdiocese had paid more than $30,000 for his treatment from a local social worker, many of the payments approved by a top Aymond aide, the vicar general Patrick Williams. Hecker said he wasn’t.

Hecker also said he was mostly unaware of abuse complaints that came in under Aymond’s watch, costing the archdiocese at least $332,500 in out-of-court settlements over 10 years beginning in 2010.

Those agreements were among more than 130 abuse-related settlements the archdiocese paid out in the decade before it declared bankruptcy. Many were negotiated by the archdiocese’s general counsel from 2012 to 2019, Wendy Vitter. The US Senate confirmed Vitter as a federal judge in 2019, after she was nominated by then president Donald Trump.

In a strange moment during the Hecker deposition, Hecker described receiving an instruction – from someone he swore he could no longer remember – to never contact Vitter under any circumstances.

He didn’t elaborate on why he thought that was, but in addition to her legal career, Vitter is married to David Vitter, a former US senator.

A federal judiciary spokesperson said Vitter was unsure who had instructed Hecker not to speak with her – or why.

Ultimately, acting in part on advice from Wendy Vitter, Aymond decided to include Hecker on the first version of a list of 57 clergy credibly accused of molesting children or vulnerable adults. That list has grown to include nearly 80 names. But Hecker’s deposition revealed how reluctantly the archdiocese acted against him.

Just 11 days before that list came out in November 2018, the archdiocese fielded a new complaint accusing Hecker of spending a weekend in the early 1970s molesting a boy he met at a high school, records mentioned at the deposition show. The accuser said he had tried to report Hecker to a well-known priest named William Maestri, who at various points has been the archdiocese’s spokesperson and superintendent of parochial schools.

The complainant “was not impressed” with the response from Maestri, whose name is misspelled as Maestre in deposition records.

“Yes, we heard stories about things like this,” Maestri reportedly said, according to a written document provided for the deposition. “We did move him around but eventually had to retire him.”

The complainant reportedly said he wanted to see Hecker’s name on the credibly accused list, which the church had announced would be released soon. But before that, Aymond spoke openly about how difficult it would be to determine exactly who would merit inclusion.

In an email to Aymond, a top aide said he told the complainant it “might not be possible” to include Hecker on the list.

When asked about that comment, the archdiocese said that the aide – victims assistance coordinator Stephen Synan – was not involved in creating the list.

Hecker charged with rape

Hecker’s entry on the 2018 credibly accused disclosure makes no mention of how many separate accusations of child molestation he has faced. It says the first allegation reported against Hecker arrived in 1996, apparently ignoring the one Hannan addressed with him in 1988.

“That is not true, is it?” Trahant asked Hecker at the deposition. After resisting answering the question, Hecker said: “Yeah. Evidently, that must be an error.”

The archdiocese said it had no record of any complaint to Hannan in 1988, despite Hecker’s written confession and testimony that it existed.

After the list’s release, archdiocesan officials sought to assure parishioners that Hecker for years had been restricted from presenting himself as a priest – much less saying mass. But at his deposition, Hecker recounted how during the last 18 years he had presided over masses for residents at a priests’ retirement home where he had lived.

He even detailed how Aymond himself went to a mass and brunch there in July 2019, breaking bread with Hecker and at least two other priests on the credibly accused list, confirming a long-held rumor that offended clergy molestation survivors and their advocates.

“Yes, I’ve been celebrating the mass there,” Hecker said, of the retirement home. Asked if archdiocesan officials were aware, Hecker said: “Yeah, they knew.”

An archdiocesan spokesperson said that church law allows priests to continue saying mass in private without a “congregation”. But church law expert Tom Doyle – who used to serve as the staff canon lawyer at the Vatican embassy in Washington DC – said that in cases like Hecker’s, private mass cannot involve anyone other than the priest and perhaps an altar server.

Eventually, Hecker’s inclusion on the 2018 roster produced the most serious ramification for him. A member of the US military went to law enforcement and reported that he was a teenager in 1975 when Hecker, then a staff member at his high school, strangled him unconscious in a church bell tower – pretending to teach him a wrestling move – then sodomized him.

The archdiocese of New Orleans waited to turn over Hecker’s complete personnel file until June 2023, when it received a subpoena from the local district attorney. Three months later, a grand jury empaneled by the DA charged Hecker with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted as charged, he would receive mandatory life imprisonment.

In August 2023, the Guardian and WWL asked Hecker about those allegations. He flatly denied choking and raping anyone.

But he had already been asked the question. At his 2020 deposition, Trahant asked Hecker if he raped the victim at the center of the only criminal case ever opened against him.

Under oath, he invoked his fifth amendment rights.

‘There was no love there. Only beatings’ – Westbank orphans appeal to Simon Harris as they tell heartbreaking tale of childhood in his hometown

The typed report said his name was Robin Mathers and he was 11 years and three months old. It was 1977 and the school principal at St Patrick’s National School in Greystones, Co Wicklow, had referred the boy to the local health board for psychological assessment because of his “slow academic progress”.

“Robin is a very quiet, nervous boy who is very small for his age. He does not mix very well with the children in his class and his school and homework have been particularly poor of late.

“He was ill-at-ease throughout assessment and his hands trembled when he manipulated the puzzles in the IQ test.

“Factors in Robin’s institutional background are probably responsible for his poor achievement in academic and social areas,” the psychologist wrote.

The boy’s “institutionalised background” was in a dysfunctional orphanage in Greystones run by the volatile evangelical Adeline Mathers, who made children call her “Auntie”.

The name the adults called him was not even his own. He was 20 when he learned the name “Robin Mathers” was imposed on him by Adeline Mathers, who forced all the children in her care to take her name. His name — his real name — is Colm Begley.

Now in his late 50s, it pains Colm to read the psychological assessment of his 11-year-old self as a clearly terrified child with trembling fingers.

“I’d say that was a lot to do with nerves. I was nervous all the time, waiting for the next beating to come,” he said.

“There was no love there. Only beatings. That’s all I remember. You would get the electric flex if you stole an apple from the tree in the orchard, or if you wet the bed...

“Even though we were sleeping in the nursery on mattresses on the floor, sometimes we would be afraid to get up to go to the toilet — and that’s how we would wet the bed…

“What would happen was we would get up in the morning. Auntie — Adeline Mathers — she would find out you had wet the bed because all the sheets would be wet. And then you’d be called into the little kitchen and she would tell you to bend over the bench.”

A second woman administered an injection, he said. “And then Adeline Mathers would come with the electric flex and she would whip you right across your legs and backside with the flex.”

To this day he has no idea what he was injected with.

Along with the beatings, he recalls the starvation. Porridge and tins of Heinz baby food were mixed together and served in a slop.

“You’d get one scoop — one ladle of baby food — that could be your breakfast. And you might have that for your evening meal as well, when you came home in the evening,” he said.

He broke into the fridge freezer one night and ate frozen bread and butter. He stole dog biscuits from the pantry and took tins of sponge pudding that he stabbed open with rusty nails.

Colm is one of around 19 former residents who say they were beaten and starved, and in some cases sexually abused, during their time at Westbank orphanage in the hometown of new Taoiseach Simon Harris.

The Westbank Orphanage Redress Campaign is calling on the TD for Wicklow to use his power and influence to not just acknowledge the wrong done to them as children, but to correct the wrong done to them as adults.

They are denied access to the State’s residential redress scheme for children raised in institutions, and were also excluded from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. So now the Westbank survivors want the Taoiseach to finally include them.

They are not the only ones pressing for inclusion. Two reports of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation suggested that Westbank survivors were “unfairly excluded” from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme and acknowledge that it should have been open to them.

An Oireachtas joint committee recommended in 2022 that the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme should be extended to Westbank residents.

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald and Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit reminded Simon Harris on his first outing as Taoiseach of the “shameful exclusion” of and “the grave injustice” done to the Westbank “orphans”.

Sidney Herdman, who like Colm Begley suffered years of beatings and starvation as a child in Westbank, emailed the Taoiseach on Monday.

“Westbank Orphanage children were subject to sexual abuse as well as to emotional and physical abuse,” he wrote.

“It was a dysfunctional Protestant evangelical orphanage that closed in the 1990s, for which the Irish government had an established statutory responsibility, to which all Protestant denominations sent children and which they supported. On behalf of Westbank residents, I demand that the Irish Government adhere to a central recommendation of its own Commission of Inquiry. The Westbank Orphanage is a blot on the landscape of Wicklow, the garden of Ireland.”

​The legislation underpinning the Residential Institutions Redress Act recognised industrial schools, reformatory schools, orphanages or special schools that were subject to state inspections.

According to Niall Meehan, the retired head of journalism at Griffith College who is co-ordinating the redress campaign, Westbank was subject to inspection, but was simply never considered for inclusion in the scheme. Subsequent attempts to include it were deemed too late.

Founded as the Protestant Home for Orphan & Destitute Girls, the orphanage moved from Harold’s Cross in Dublin to Wicklow in the late 1940s. Adeline Mathers, an evangelical Presbyterian from Portadown, presided there with apparent impunity for decades.

Up to 50 children lived there until her death in 1999, after which Westbank closed. Many children entered as infants through a network of Protestant institutions, such as the Bethany Mother and Baby Home on Orwell Road in Dublin.

Mathers relied on devout donors, many of them evangelical Free Presbyterians. Children recall being brought across the Border to churches where they would literally sing for their supper.

She enrolled some children into fee-paying schools with a Protestant ethos. 

But not all of them prospered. 

The children were farmed out to Protestant families in summertime, where they were usually put to work. Some were abused.

She was insistent on rearing the children as a “family”, changing their names to hers. She lied to children about their parents - and children were not told if they had other siblings in the home.

There were no paid staff. The children and volunteers did all the work. Few were ever adopted from the home. Some adoptions to Scotland and the UK were illegally done.

Colm Begley left Westbank aged 17. Mathers told him he was joining the army and put him on a boat to London with £10 in his pocket. It turned out he was being sent to a Salvation Army hostel.

Mathers had told him his mother was dead and he had no siblings. Yet years later he discovered he had a brother, Andrew - who actually lived in the orphanage at the same time as he did, until Andrew was adopted.

Other residents in the campaign group tell similar stories.

One man, who asked not to be named, says he was beaten, starved and “bible- bashed”. He recalls being locked in a room with a well-known Free Presbyterian minister who often visited the home.

“He was praying. I wasn’t let out of the room until I asked the lord into my heart,” he said.

On another occasion, he was sent to stay with a minister in Northern Ireland who tutored him in French, and beat him with a poker when he got a word wrong.

A woman, who also asked not to be named, was “psychologically abused” by Mathers. She was told her mother never loved her and that she had no siblings. However, her sister was also living at Westbank all along.

This woman still lives in the Wicklow constituency of Simon Harris, who was born in 1986 and lived in a different Greystones in a different era to the children of Westbank.

Her message to him is to listen: “Open your eyes, open your ears. Hear us. We are real people, and we are hurting.”

TDs call on Taoiseach to address legacy of abuse in Wicklow orphanage

Three former residents of the Westbank Orphanage, in Greystones, concluded their days-long campaign to raise awareness of their exclusion from the Mother and Baby Home Redress Scheme, which was was set up in 2002 to give compensation and support to people who were abused while resident in industrial schools, reformatories and other institutions.

Westbank Orphanage was based in Greystones, having relocated from Harold’s Cross, Dublin in the 1940s, where it was known as the Protestant Orphan Home for Destitute Girls. The orphanage was associated with the Presbyterian Church, the Church of Ireland and with the Bray Gospel Hall, also known as the Christian Assembly Bray.

The campaign, led by Sidney Herdman, Colm Begley and Andrew Yates has been supported by Wicklow TDs Jennifer Whitmore and John Brady, who have called on Taoiseach Simon Harris to address the legacy of abuse in the orphanage, which was located in his hometown.

The campaigners embarked on three days of leafletting and postering in Bray and Greystones, handing out information at Evangelical, Presbyterian, Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic services on Sunday, May 5, 2024.

Deputy Whitmore met with the three former residents as the campaign drew to a close and pledged to continue raising the Westbank Redress issue in the Dail.

While the three men received a positive reception from the public and at all of the churches they visited, at Bray Gospel Hall the Westbank Redress Facebook page reported that the church official, Gordon Lewis, objected to leaflets being handed out to those attending, while also refusing to allow a Westbank poster to be placed on a pole outside the Gospel Hall.

When contacted, Mr Lewis said: “As a Christian church, we have always welcomed those in Westbank, (including former residents) to our Hall, and still do.” However, he added that “without any prejudice whatsoever to the campaign, it was disappointing to see church worship disturbed in that way.”

The campaigners said that after the service, “though still hostile to the message of the former residents, Gordon Lewis asked us in for some lunch”, which they declined because of other engagements.

Deputy Whitmore has now called on the Government to support the survivors of Westbank Orphanage, following a debate in the Dáil on the Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill 2024, which took place last Tuesday, April 30.

“Survivors of the Westbank Orphanage have contacted me in recent weeks,” Deputy Whitmore said. “Their redress campaign should not have to be fought – this should have been addressed years ago. I want to pay tribute to the survivors who have not allowed this to be forgotten.

“As children, they were subject to psychological and physical abuse in the orphanage. Many were sent out to work in the summers, illegally adopted and kept separate from their family members who were also in Westbank.

“Westbank survivors were excluded from the initial Mother and Baby Home Redress Scheme; however, since then, in 2016, the Second Interim Report of the Mother and Baby Home Commission Inquiry, Section 5.14 of the report, stated that there is an argument that it (Westbank) should have been included in the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme.

“The final report’s recommendations from the Oireachtas Joint Committee also stated that other institutions, including Westbank, not investigated by the Commission, were unfairly excluded from the scheme.

“The Supports for Survivors of Residential Institutional Abuse Bill 2024 is an opportunity to recognise the orphanage survivors. As a Wicklow TD and a Greystones local, I know that while we cannot undo the harm that was done, we must, at the very least, do all we can to support these survivors now in adulthood.

“I will continue to pursue redress for these victims and bring forward an amendment to the legislation in the weeks ahead seeking to address this gap in the redress scheme,” concluded Deputy Whitmore.

Meanwhile, Wicklow Sinn Féin TD John Brady has called on Taoiseach Simon Harris, a native of Greystones, “to use all of his power and influence” to address the legacy of abuse in the orphanage.

Deputy Brady said the orphanage, for which the Irish state had a statutory responsibility, was a place where residents suffered horrific abuse, including sexual, emotional and physical abuse.

“The record of suffering endured by the children who passed through the Westbank Orphanage in Wicklow is truly heartbreaking. Its story is one of young lives being destroyed by abuse and neglect,” he said.

“I am appealing to the Fine Gael Taoiseach Simon Harris, a Wicklow man, to offer his support to the survivors of the Westbank Orphanage. Many of whom have suffered an appalling litany of sexual and physical assaults, including forced starvation, along with wide-scale emotional abuse, in their campaign for inclusion in the Residential Institutions Redress scheme.

“Both a Joint Committee of the Oireachtas, and the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation have called for the Westbank Orphanage to be included in the Residential Institutions Redress scheme. Westbank Orphanage was subject to state inspection, which led it to qualify for inclusion in the Residential Institutions Redress scheme. Continuing attempts to exclude the survivors is wrong on so many levels,” he continued.

“These were children who were beaten, starved, in some cases sexually abused, along with enduring terrible emotional abuse. Some of these children were taken across the border illegally to work as farm labourers, sometimes from as young as five years of age.

“They were in many instances denied adoption. Children were lied to about their parents, often having their names changed. Many children had siblings in the orphanage that they knew nothing about, they were lied to and made to believe that they were alone in the world.

“The Irish State had a statutory responsibility for the orphanage, to which all protestant denominations sent children. Today, the State has both a moral and legal responsibility towards these children, that cannot be allowed to be swept under the carpet. I am calling, indeed appealing to Taoiseach Simon Harris to give his support to the campaign of the survivors of this terrible abuse which took place in his own hometown of Greystones.

“In the words of one survivor, the story of the Westbank Orphanage is a ‘blot on the landscape of Wicklow’. Taoiseach Simon Harris has the opportunity and the power to make this right,” he concluded.