IRELAND
Irish Independent
SARAH MACDONALD – 24 JUNE 2013
THE Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland has hit out at the lack of financial and legal support for priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse.
A spokesman for the association, which represents more than 1,000 Irish priests, told the Irish Independent that the ACP was aware of at least a dozen priests against whom false allegations had been made in the past few years.
Fr Tony Flannery said there were now sufficient numbers of false allegations to “cause concern” and that the ACP had been directly involved in three recent cases where priests were cleared of wrongdoing.
These relate to Kerry priest Fr Liam O’Brien, Louth priest Fr Oliver Brennan and missionary priest Fr Kevin Reynolds (pictured), who was falsely accused by RTE’s ‘Prime Time Investigates’ in 2011.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.