SURVIVORS OF NOTORIOUS child abuser Bill Kenneally are meeting Taoiseach Micheál Martin later this morning, as they continue their bid for an apology from the state and multiple organisations over their treatment.
It follows the publication of a major state inquiry examining child sexual abuse complaints regarding the former accountant and sports coach, who also died last week while serving a jail sentence in Midlands Prison.
A number of Kenneally’s victims, many now aged in their 50s, met with justice minister Jim O’Callaghan last week when they learned that they would receive a state apology in the Dáil in the coming weeks.
They have also sought an apology from Fianna Fáil, An Garda Síochána, the HSE and the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore, but it is less clear if this will happen, following the inquiry’s finding that there was no collusion by these organisations around the abuse.
Instead, the judge criticised the decision of two senior gardaí to let Bill Kenneally walk free from a garda station in 1987 after he had admitted to abusing boys.
One of the surviving gardaí told the inquiry that there was no cover up, and instead he felt that allowing Kenneally’s family, who included a former Fianna Fáil TD and a local priest, to arrange psychiatric treatment was a better option in light of an unwillingness of families to make official complaints.
Kenneally – from Laragh, Summerville Avenue, Waterford – was a former tallyman and canvasser for Fianna Fáil for decades and a part of the powerful Kenneally political dynasty in the city.
Waterford Fianna Fáil TD and the government chief whip Mary Butler said last week that she offered a personal apology for any “trauma, distress or hurt” that she has caused Bill Kenneally’s abuse survivors, but she noted that Fianna Fáil as an organisation had not been implicated.
Fianna Fáil’s previous TD for Waterford Brendan Kenneally, a cousin of Bill, resigned his membership of the party after this month’s report was published.
Amongst the findings, the former high court judge who heading up the inquiry wrote in his report how the partner of one of the former victims of Bill Kenneally had contacted Brendan in 2001 to tell him about the abuse.
Brendan Kenneally did not report this to any formal agencies but instead sought to arrange psychiatric treatment for his cousin.
This course of action, the report found, at “the very least fell substantially below the standards the Commission would expect from a TD of Mr Kenneally’s experience”.
The Commission reported that “it cannot definitively on the balance of probabilities establish knowledge by Brendan Kenneally of Bill Kenneally’s sexual abuse of boys prior to 2001”.
Child abuser’s death
Bill Kenneally died last week at Midlands Prison where he was serving a 19-year sentence for the abuse of 15 boys, just days after the publication of the state report.
After Bill Kenneally was sentenced in 2016, his victims launched a campaign to find out how different authorities and leadership figures within the area had failed to bring their abuser to justice for decades.
The inquiry report into the case was published this month.