Fr Malachy Finnegan: A child abuser and his victims

DUBLIN (IRELAND)
Irish Times

March 17, 2018

By Patsy McGarry

During therapy sessions for sex offenders, Finnegan insisted: ‘I’ve done nothing wrong’

A former Catholic priest remembers Fr Malachy Finnegan when he was at the Stroud treatment centre for sex offenders in Gloucestershire, England. It was 1995, and the former priest had himself been sent there because he was gay and was considered a sex addict by church authorities.

He recalls Finnegan during group therapy sessions when everyone was expected to be open and honest about their activities as part of their treatment “He never opened his mouth for the four months he was there [at the sessions] except to say, with resolute stubbornness, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong’.”

If “he had admitted anything he would never have returned to ministry”, the former priest said. “Everything he would have said and done would have been reported back [to his bishop].”

Away from the therapy sessions he and Finnegan became friendly. It was how the former priest discovered Finnegan has spent some time in the South at a parish in Co Laois, and how he had claimed that he and the then bishop of Dromore diocese Francis Brooks had been classmates.

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