NORTHERN IRELAND
Belfast Telegraph
Historical abuse inquiry live: Police in the Republic knew about the activities of Fr Brendan Smyth, inquiry hears
By Lesley-Anne McKeown
PUBLISHED
24/06/2015
Police in the Republic of Ireland knew about the activities of a notorious paedophile priest in the early 1970s, an inquiry has heard.
Confidential documents from a psychiatric hospital in Dublin have revealed Fr Brendan Smyth, who went on to abuse hundreds of children over four decades, had asked to be admitted after coming to the attention of Gardai in 1973.
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Joseph Aiken, counsel for the inquiry said: “For some reason Brendan Smyth has asked the doctor looking after him to write a letter to Finglas Garda station to say that he is going to be taken in for some inpatient treatment.”
Smyth had been conducting a retreat in Finglas in July 1973.
The documents, which were only released to the long-running Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) inquiry this morning, also show how Smyth was officially diagnosed as a paedophile in 1974.
The hearing was delayed for several hours today because the medical notes, which the Norbertine order had been trying to obtain for many years, were finally released from St Patrick’s Hospital this morning.
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