IRELAND
Herald
BY CLODAGH SHEEHY – 21 JULY 2014 12:00 AM
A DUNDALK man abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth and sworn to secrecy by the Church, has revealed he was offered €10,000 by its lawyers.
Brendan Boland was one of two boys who had to sign an oath of secrecy in 1975 when they gave evidence about their abuse by Smyth to a church inquiry.
Norbertine priest Smyth continued to abuse children and is believed to have raped and sexually assaulted more than 100 children over five decades up to the 1990s.
In his memoir “Sworn to Silence”, Boland says Cardinal Sean Brady, who was a 36-year-old canon lawyer and teacher in 1975, countersigned the oath of secrecy the Dundalk man was required to make about Smyth.
He says in 2011 Church lawyers offered him €10,000 to settle his High Court case for damages. The amount was to include legal costs for 14 years litigation.
Boland subsequently settled the case for €100,000 plus costs the following year.
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