UNITED KINGDOM
Hackney Gazette
01 June 2017 Sam Gelder
A former friend of rapist priest Eugene Fitzpatrick is in shock after learning the man who regularly visited her family home had been abusing children for decades.
Maddie Noonan, 59, said had she stayed in the area she wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving her children with the popular cleric of Our Lady and Saint Joseph in Balls Pond Road.
Fitzpatrick, 68, was sentenced to 22 years in jail on Friday after being found guilty of raping a boy between 1986 and 1992 while working at the church, and sexually assaulting another in the 1960s and ’70s.
Police believe there may be more survivors of his abuse, and have urged anyone suffering in silence to come forward.
Fitzpatrick was a close friend of Maddie and her family, who lived a stone’s throw from Our Lady and Saint Joseph. To her, he was the friendly parish priest who restored her faith in the Catholic church.
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