BishopAccountability.org
	How RTE Was Duped Is Worthy of a 'Prime Time Investigates' Special Irish Independent November 27, 2011 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/how-rte-was-duped-is-worthy-of-a-prime-time-investigates-special-2946950.html WORD spread through the close community of Irish missionary priests in January that Prime Time Investigates, RTE's flagship current-affairs show, was planning a programme on child sex abuse in the missions. Missionaries reported back to their orders that Aoife Kavanagh, a veteran reporter on African affairs for the State broadcaster, was in Kenya asking questions. Then came the questionnaires sent from Prime Time to various missionary societies, seeking statistics on the sex crimes of missionary priests. Until he was door-stepped in his parish of Ahascragh, there hadn't been a whisper about Fr Kevin Reynolds. The 65-year-old priest with the Mill Hill Missionaries went to Africa after he was ordained in 1971 and stayed until 2004. He returned to the parish of Ahascragh without a blemish on his record. On Saturday, May 7, after celebrating First Holy Communion in the Galway parish, Fr Reynolds was confronted by a television crew of three men and Aoife Kavanagh The claims put to him that morning subsequently constituted the gravest and costliest false allegations in the broadcaster's history. But on that May afternoon, the Prime Time Investigates team seemed sure of their ground. They put to him that he had a child, Sheila, with a woman called Veneranda; that a head teacher in a local school knew about the child; that his bishop in Africa was aware of this child; and that that was why he had left Africa. Fr Reynolds, as the programme demonstrated, was willingly interviewed there and then. He denied all the claims and offered to show his reference from the bishop. So disbelieving was he of the allegations that he joked as he walked away: "I hope I look good on the picture, ha, ha." Only afterwards, when he related this encounter to some parishioners, did the gravity of the charges sink in. One advised him to see a solicitor, which he did once the weekend was over. The legal correspondence documents Fr Reynolds' increasingly desperate attempts to halt the broadcast. On May 11, Fair & Murtagh, a firm in Mount Bellew, sent a solicitor's letter to RTE on behalf of Fr Reynolds. It was addressed to the head of broadcasting and over three pages it put RTE on notice of the "false and untrue" claims and offered a reference from his bishop in Nairobi, Philip Sulumeti. Ms Kavanagh had claimed that the bishop knew about Fr Reynolds' alleged love child. It was addressed to the "Head of Broadcasting, RTE, Donnybrook, Dublin 4." Most media outlets observe a strict protocol that all solicitors' letters are dealt with by the lawyers and RTE has a dedicated legal department. In this case, Fair & Murtagh's letter was not acknowledged by the legal department but by the journalist. At 16.46pm on May 18, Ms Kavanagh sent an email to Fair & Murtagh, which was "cc'd" to the programme's executive producer, Brian Pairceir. It said the Prime Time Investigates programme was going ahead on May 23 with the "serious allegations" against Fr Reynolds. She wrote: "Your client should know that we have been given an account by a very credible third-party source, substantiating the allegation that Fr Reynolds is the father of Sheila." She asked further questions of Fr Reynolds about his sexual conduct: "Even if he cannot remember her name, did Fr Reynolds ever have sex with a teenage girl during his time in Kenya? "Is your client denying any sexual relations or encounters of a sexual nature, consensual or otherwise?" It concluded: "We would strongly urge Fr Reynolds to reconsider his denials, even at this late stage." Fair & Murtagh repeated Fr Reynolds' denials and forwarded his reference from Bishop Philip Sulumeti. On May 20, Ms Kavanagh emailed Bishop Sulumeti in Nairobi: "We have very credible information that a number of years later, when his daughter was in school, you were made aware of this fact. I understand that you yourself were struck by the resemblance between Fr Reynolds and his daughter." Bishop Sulumeti replied that same evening with a "categoric denial" of the allegations, stating: "I am hearing them for the first time today from your email." Through his religious order, Fr Reynolds offered to take a paternity test, an offer which RTE did not take up, to the cost of the broadcaster, the journalists involved and -- above all -- Fr Reynolds. A Mission To Prey was broadcast, as scheduled, on May 23 and more than 500,000 people watched. The programme made allegations against seven priests, five of whom were already in the public domain. Fr Kevin and a deceased Christian Brother were the "new" element to the programme. Veneranda and her daughter Sheila were interviewed. Sheila, who is in her 20s, recalled on camera how children used to say: "Look at that girl, she's born with a priest." Afterwards, a panel discussed the scandal and the following day Morning Ireland devoted a slot to it. Fr Reynolds' lawyers later claimed the documentary accused him of "rape". To many who watched the programme, Fr Reynolds, with his laughing quip, seemed entirely glib. By the time the programme was broadcast, any jocular disbelief that he had displayed on camera had vanished. He had by then been removed from his parish to the Mill Hill Missionaries in Rathgar, Dublin. His solicitors sent another letter the day after the broadcast and, once again, the journalist, rather than RTE's lawyers, responded in an email sent on May 26: "Prime Time is satisfied it can stand over each and every allegation made against your client." Fr Reynolds later said the low point came when he met "legal people" in Galway a couple of days after the broadcast. They recommended that he "go for a long holiday" and that he would be "foolish" to challenge the might of RTE. He was truly at a loss. Days passed and nothing was done. He was holed up in Rathgar and at his lowest ebb when he was put in touch with the Association of Catholic Priests. It was a new association, founded last year by a dynamic collection of priests, some of them former missionaries. One was Fr Sean McDonagh, a Columban priest who was a friend of one of Fr Reynolds' parishioners in Ahascragh. That was Fr Reynolds' first stroke of luck. The second was that since January, the association had been in talks with a group of lawyers about taking cases on a pro bono basis where accused priests were facing false allegations. Fr McDonagh recalled: "He came to me on Monday, June 13. I said, 'We have this facility, would you be willing to go through our procedures?' He said, 'Well, I've nowhere else to turn. Every door has been slammed in my face.' "He was shattered. He said to me, 'I'd prefer if you'd shoot me because it would be over once and for all.' He said, 'Now I'm walking up and down, I have no way out, I've been told to take a long holiday.' He was in very bad shape." Fr McDonagh brought him to solicitor Robert Dore the next day. "Robert talked to him for about an hour and he came down and said, 'This is an unbelievable case. This is outrageous.' I asked him, 'Will you take it?' 'Absolutely,' he said. "Within a day, he had sent legal proceedings to RTE. Within a week, Robert was finding discovery of documents and all that stuff." Robert Dore started legal proceedings on June 17 and in a robust letter, he asserted his client's innocence, demanded a paternity test as a matter of urgency and urged RTE to bear the cost. He offered an "opportunity" for a retraction and, failing that, proposed going to trial at the earliest possible opportunity to restore Fr Reynolds' character and ministry. This time, RTE's legal department replied, agreeing to the paternity test "in principle" but standing over the programme. The broadcaster retained Ormond Quay Paternity Services to perform the tests on Fr Reynolds in Dublin and on Sheila in Nairobi. A GP would take the samples and RTE would pay the costs -- estimated at €700. RTE still seemed utterly confident: "My client is fully satisfied that it can stand over the allegations made against your client," its legal department wrote on June 29. While Fr Reynolds welcomed the paternity test, it appeared that the woman who claimed to be his daughter did not. Within eight days of RTE agreeing to a paternity test, his accuser, far away in Kenya, wrote a letter of her own, retracting her allegations against the priest. According to an account given to Fr Reynolds' solicitor, she arrived at the Mill Hill Missionary community in Nairobi on July 7, bearing a handwritten letter. She asked to see Fr Patrick Ryan, an Irish priest and a friend of Fr Reynolds. When he came to her, she conveyed that she had written the letter that day. In it, she retracted her allegations against Fr Reynolds and indicated that she did not want to do a paternity test, nor did she want to do any more interviews. She wrote with some formality and in careful handwriting: "I humbly request this matter to come to an end because Fr Kevin is not my biological father and I have found out who he is. "Therefore, I am not willing to take a sample of DNA test and more interviews concerning this issue. Thanks very much for your concern towards me. Yours faithfully, Sheila Mudi." She gave her address as a post-office box in Nairobi. Fr Reynolds was tipped off about the letter but it took weeks to wend its way from Nairobi to Dublin. It was sent first to the Mill Hill Missionaries in the UK and from there to their representative in Dublin, Fr Michael Corcoran, on August 2. He telephoned Fr Ryan, who was then back in Dublin, to ask him to authenticate the letter, which he did. Its authenticity does not appear to have been disputed. The letter no doubt gave Fr Reynolds succour but he needed the paternity test to prove his innocence. He had completed his part of the test at the Ormond Quay clinic on July 13. But it was August 25 before Sheila completed hers. Fr Reynolds never discovered the reasons for the delay, nor what red flags Sheila's retraction threw up for the State broadcaster. RTE executives are refusing to comment pending the outcome of three inquiries now under way into the scandals and because of the confidentiality issues around the subsequent legal settlement. Fr Reynolds remained in the dark. Throughout July and August, his solicitor, Robert Dore, dispatched a succession of thundering letters demanding an explanation, in escalating tones of indignation. On July 20: "Your continued silence with regard to the initiation by you of the paternity test procedures for Veneranda and Sheila is disgraceful." On August 4: "My client remains completely in the dark as to what if anything has transpired on your side with regard to the paternity test. Whenever my client has sought information, he has been fobbed off notwithstanding the effect your client's defamation of him is having on him on a daily basis." RTE replied on August 10: "RTE is endeavouring to have the paternity test in Kenya carried out as soon as possible and I shall revert to you in this regard when I am instructed further." On August 25, Robert Dore wrote: "A further fortnight has now elapsed and we remain completely in the dark as to what is in fact happening in relation to the paternity test." The following day, RTE replied to say that the paternity test had been completed with the results expected in a fortnight. Both sides were to get the result simultaneously but even that arrangement proved controversial. Fr Reynolds heard on Monday, September 5, from Kevin Keane of the Irish Independent, who learnt from a "source" in RTE that the paternity test was negative. Mr Dore wrote: "Not only have you displayed an appalling lack of professional courtesy but rather than notifying me, the result was cynically leaked to at least one journalist." On top of that, the clinic had advised a retest. Apparently, Sheila didn't present photo ID when she gave the sample at a Nairobi hospital -- the RTE representative who brought her there vouched for her identity. It was September 15 before a retest was done, September 22 before it was confirmed that Fr Reynolds was indeed innocent and September 28 before RTE offered the priest an apology for the first time. Because of disagreements over its placing and wording, it was October 6 before that apology was read out on air, before that evening's Prime Time programme. Fr Reynolds returned to his parish in Ahascragh to a hero's welcome of 600 parishioners with lots of bunting, in the company of his Bishop Christopher Jones and eliciting three standing ovations. He was, he told his flock, "freed from lies" but "a little battle-weary and wounded and the scars will remain". The legal case dragged on until November 17 when RTE settled the action before it was due to go into court. The sum was not disclosed -- speculation put it from €750,000 to €2m to €5m. We still haven't heard RTE's account of the debacle. Because the case was settled before it came to trial, RTE's defence was never aired in court. In legal correspondence, RTE said it had broadcast the allegations against Fr Reynolds in good faith. What went on behind the scenes at RTE, from the programme's inception to its broadcast and the grim dawning of its fatal error, will no doubt be the subject of the government-ordered inquiry by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland and also the internal inquiry headed by the RTE's director general, Noel Curran, who offered to resign over the scandal. In the vacuum of an explanation, rumours swirl. It has been claimed that RTE's legal department raised red flags prior to the broadcast of the programme. It would in normal circumstances have to be vetted by Ken O'Shea, the editor of current affairs, and by the managing director of news and current affairs, Ed Mulhall. A key question is why Fr Reynolds' early offer of a paternity test was not taken up immediately. The testimony of an impoverished mother and daughter, a "third-party independent source" and supposed evidence of financial assistance was deemed by the Prime Time Investigates team to outweigh those concerns. In the end, the story proved untrue. How RTE came to be duped is worthy of a Prime Time Investigates of its own. Indeed, RTE had indicated from the outset that it planned to investigate this mistake internally. That position crumbled last week when the political establishment turned its guns on the State broadcaster. A day of torrid condemnation in the Dail last Tuesday culminated in a government decision to ask the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland to investigate. On foot of this onslaught, Prime Time Investigates has been suspended. Ken O'Shea and Ed Mulhall have stepped aside pending the inquiries and Aoife Kavanagh and her executive producer, Brian Pairceir, will not be involved in broadcasting. Having first claimed that there was nothing to be learnt from "rolled heads", the broadcaster now says dismissals will not be ruled out. A vindicated Fr Reynolds has embarked on the road to forgiveness; the dark clouds that shadowed him over these past six months now loom over RTE.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.