IRELAND
Irish Independent
By Niamh Horan and Maeve Sheehan
Sunday February 12 2012
A SECOND cleric named in the Prime Time Investigates programme that libelled Fr Kevin Reynolds is suing RTE for defamation.
The former Archbishop Richard Burke, from Tipperary, claims Prime time’s A Mission to Prey falsely accused him of child abuse when he was a priest in Nigeria.
He has admitted having a sexual relationship with a woman, but claimed she was an adult at the time and that the relationship was consensual. The woman complained to the Vatican, triggering his resignation two years ago as Archbishop of Benin.
A Mission to Prey included the case of Fr Burke in its investigation of clerical abuse by missionary priests in Africa. The programme’s false accusations that Fr Kevin Reynolds raped a 14-year-old girl and fathered her child led to the biggest libel settlement in RTE’s history.
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