IRELAND
Irish Independent
Tim Healy
PUBLISHED
27/06/2015
A FORMER Catholic Archbishop has told the High Court he had an “inappropriate” sexual relationship with a woman in Nigeria which began in 1989 when she was aged 20 and he was 40.
Tipperary-born Richard Burke (66), ordained a priest in 1975, said he felt “uneasy” about the demeanour of then 20-year-old Dolores Atwood, which “gave an impression of being flirtatious”, when she came unexpectedly to his private apartment on a Sunday afternoon in the Nigerian city of Warri in September or October 1989.
Mr Burke was being cross-examined in his continuing action alleging defamation in the May 2011 ‘Prime Time Investigates: Mission to Prey’ programme.
Mr Burke, a former Archbishop of Benin, Nigeria, alleges it wrongly depicted him as a paedophile. RTÉ denies defamation.
He told the court that after Ms Atwood came to his apartment, he left her in the room while he went to see if he could find a “chaperone” but he later returned alone to the room “in turmoil”.
Her “smile, eyes, expression suggested something to me”, indicated she “wanted to be intimate with me” and he felt “flattered”.
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