IRELAND
Donegal Democrat
By Michelle Nic Phaidin
Published on Monday 30 April 2012
Donegal will be the backdrop for a new hard hitting documentary that promises to reveal more startling facts about clerical abuse in Ireland. “The Shame of the Catholic Church” which is to be broadcast this Tuesday night outlines how decades of clerical abuse and cover up have left the Catholic Church in Ireland at breaking point.
In this programme, journalist Darragh Mac Intyre, a BBC journalist whose investigations into the Father Eugene Greene case rocked the Catholic Church, once again, unearths more truths about the manner in which clerical sexual abuse was dealt with in this country.
Paul Breslin, a native of Bealtaine who has been living in London for many years, first went public with his harrowing story of clerical abuse after he was approached MacIntyre for a 2002 BBC Northern Ireland Spotlight programme. By that point, Father Greene was already in jail. He had been sentenced in 2000 for abusing boys in west Donegal from 1962 to 1985. The former priest has since been released from jail and has escaped the attention of the press.
This documentary, promises revelations that will stun the Irish public. Mac Intyre is understood to have spent a period of time interviewing victims and those related to the subject in Donegal ahead of the Raphoe Diocese Report’s press launch last year. It is speculated that the show was broadcast to a select audience in recent weeks. However, the makers of the programme are remaining tight lipped as to the content of their Tuesday night programme.
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