By Paul Robinson
Yorkshire Evening Post
September 16, 2008
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/Leeds-diocese-pays-out-victims.4495510.jp
SEVEN victims of a paedophile priest have won a fight for compensation from the Catholic Church in Leeds.
The men took legal action against Leeds diocese over abuse at the hands of Father Neil Gallanagh at St John's School for the Deaf near Wetherby in the 1970s.
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| Father Neil Gallanagh |
Now the diocese has agreed out-of-court settlements with the men, now in their 40s. No details are being made public on the sum they have received – though the YEP understands it is "significant".
Previous reports said the claimants each stood to get as much as £50,000 if they succeeded in proving wilful neglect by the diocese. The case of an eighth man is still ongoing.
The action has been led by David Greenwood, a solicitor with Dewsbury-based law firm Jordans.
He said today: "No amount of money will ever make up for what happened to these men. That does not mean, however, that they should not be compensated for their ordeals."
Limit
Mr Greenwood believes the diocese's decision to settle was prompted by a recent Law Lords ruling in favour of a Leeds woman attacked in 1988 by Lotto rapist Iorworth Hoare. The woman has been fighting, with the support of the YEP, for a six-year time limit on compensation claims from victims to be lifted.
Gallanagh was given a six-month suspended prison sentence in 2005 after he admitted indecently assaulting two teenage boarders at St John's between 1975 and 1980. Charges involving five other boys under 16 were left on file at the conclusion of the 75-year-old's trial.
It later emerged that Gallanagh already had a conviction for child abuse when he was given his job at St John's. He admitted attacking a nine-year-old boy during a day trip to the Isle of Man in 1960, when he was a priest in Northern Ireland.
A spokesman for the Diocese of Leeds said today it would be "inappropriate" to comment until the group action was fully concluded.
In an earlier statement, when
the compensation bid was first announced, the diocese said written records from the time were "scant" and two bishops of the era had died.
Since that time, the diocese had developed "good policies and practice in regard to all aspects of the protection of children and vulnerable adults", the spokesman said, and it had "co-operated fully when approached by statutory authorities in regard to historical cases".
'There are no deaf signs for sexual abuse'
by Aisha Iqbal
NEIL Gallanagh's victims may finally be able to come to terms with a 30-year nightmare.
Now in their 40s, these men are still psychologically scarred by their experiences.
They approached David Greenwood's law firm in 2006, furious after Gallanagh was handed a mere six month suspended prison sentence after a court case. The men wanted "further justice".
Speaking to the YEP in 2006 when the bid for compensation against the church was announced, one of the victims said: "This man ruined many people's lives, including mine.
"How could the church have allowed this to happen?"
Sentencing Gallanagh in 2005, the Recorder of Leeds, Norman Jones QC, told the former priest he had abused a position of trust and preyed on particularly vulnerable victims.
But he said Gallanagh's guilty plea, his age – he was by then 75 – and recent ill health meant a jail sentence would be inappropriate.
The decision infuriated child abuse victims' campaigners.
Shy Keenan, founder of the Phoenix Survivors group, said: "His broken trust was more serious because the children were deaf. They don't have as much protection – and there are no deaf signs for sexual abuse."
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