NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
BY DEBORAH MCALEESE – 23 JUNE 2015
Ireland’s most notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth admitted to having potentially abused more than 200 children during his years in the priesthood, it has been revealed.
The full extent of the serial sex abuser’s offending has never been revealed.
However, Smyth himself believed the number of victims he abused could be in the many hundreds.
In his own words, which were yesterday made public for the first time during a hearing of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, Smyth told a doctor in 1994: “Over the years of religious life it could be that I have sexually abused between 50 and 100 children. That number could even be double, or perhaps even more.”
The inquiry heard that Smyth received psychiatric treatment many times during his time in the priesthood.
Smyth was convicted of more than 100 indecent assaults against children across Ireland, offences which took place over a 40-year period. He died in prison in 1997 after a heart attack.
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