IRELAND
Irish Independent
Mary Carolan
PUBLISHED
25/06/2015
A FORMER Catholic Archbishop claims an RTE programme falsely depicted him as a “sexual predator” and a “rapist” who took advantage of a vulnerable teenage girl in Nigeria who regarded the church as a “sanctuary”.
The Prime Time Investigates Mission to Prey programme broadcast on May 23rd 2011 wrongly meant Richard Burke sexually assaulted Dolores Atwood in a hospital bed in Nigeria when she was aged 13 and had had sex with her when she was aged 14, Jack Fitzgerald SC said.
Mr Burke (66), from Clonmel, Co Tipperary, would say he had had consensual sexual relations with Ms Atwood when she was an adult but this programme wrongly depicted him as a paedophile, counsel said.
RTE had sought information from Mr Burke about how many people he had sex with but his consensual sexual relations with other women were irrelevant as this defamation case is “about paedophilia and nothing else”.
He will say he is not a paedophile, he “abhors it, it offends him and he will tell you the truth”, counsel said. “This man is a human being and he has a reputation.”
Today is the second day of Mr Burke’s action over alleged defamation in the Mission to Prey programme. The case is being heard before Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley and a High Court jury of six men and six women.
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