By Alan Fisher
Al Jazeera
February 15, 2010
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/europe/2010/02/15/irelands-legacy-abuse
IRELAND -- As the Northern Ireland peace process began to get underway in the early 1990s, I remember spending a week outside the Irish parliament in Dublin.
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Albert Reynolds, the Irish prime minister and one of the main architects of the fledging peace moves, was in trouble because of the way his government had handled an abuse scandal involving Father Brendan Smyth, a Catholic priest in Dublin.
Smyth was an arrogant bully. I still remember watching him on camera as he emerged from a court hearing, swaggering towards the lens and then pretending to headbutt it, a smirk on his face. For over 20 years, he abused dozens of boys in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the US.
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