Ireland

Paedophile Bill Kenneally refuses to accept he ruined the lives of his victims

‘I don’t know why they took 30 years to come forward,’ Kenneally tells Commission of Investigation

Bill Kenneally being brought from The Hickson Commission hearings on Tuesday. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill

Ronan McGreevy
Wed Mar 13 2024 - 19:37

Convicted paedophile Bill Kenneally has refused to accept that he ruined the lives of his victims.

There were audible gasps at a Commission of Investigation, which is looking at the response of State and other agencies to his case, when he was asked that question by counsel for the victims Barra McGrory KC.

“I don’t know why they took 30 years to come forward,” he said in response. Six victims of his were at the hearing.

When asked if he had anything to say to them now, Kenneally (73) responded: “I said what I said in court. That was the appropriate time and place and they got up and walked out.”

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Kenneally is providing evidence before the commission which is investigating the response of State and other agencies to his case.

Kenneally pleaded guilty in late 2015 and again in 2022 to multiple cases of child sex abuse in Waterford. A member of a well-known Fianna Fáil family, he is currently serving prison sentences of more than 18 years for the abuse of 15 children between 1979 and 1990.

Kenneally was asked if he provided alcohol and money to potential victims with the purpose of ingratiating himself to them in order to get sexual favours.

He said supplying alcohol was “not a crime”. When counsel Barra McGrory put it to him that the purpose of plying them with alcohol was to “loosen their inhibitions so they would be more co-operative”, he responded, “co-operative insinuates consensual”.

He said the amount of money he was alleged to have given to his victims was a multiple of his salary.

Kenneally was questioned as to what his cousin, the former Fianna Fáil TD and senator, Brendan Kenneally, knew about his abusing.

It was suggested to him that he and his cousin organised a trip to a basketball tournament in 1981 and that Brendan Kenneally had allocated a room to Bill Kenneally and a victim known as A12.

A12 claimed that night that they had been subjected to “horrific abuse” by Bill Kenneally and Brendan Kenneally said to A12 the following morning, “did you have fun last night”. Bill Kenneally said he had no recollection of that night.

When asked what gardaí would have found had they raided his house and car in 1985, he said they would have found handcuffs, orange twine, scissors and a flash lamp.

Bill Kenneally was interviewed by gardaí on December 30th, 1987 at which he admitted that he had abused at least six boys.

He told the commission that sexual assault on minors that did not include sodomy was “totally disregarded” as a crime in early 1980s Ireland, but towards the end of the 1980s was seen as a crime.

The commission heard that in June 1985 one of his victims had gone to the gardaí claiming to have been abused by Kenneally, but gardaí had said they could do nothing for him without an adult been present.

“Would you have had it in your heart to tell them what you were up to at the time?” barrister Ray Motherway put it to him. “I probably would have,” he said, but he disputed there was any evidence of anybody having gone to gardaí at that time.

Commission chairman and retired judge Michael White accused Kenneally at one stage of treating the process like a “bit of a circus” and that he had attempted to “minimise the scale of his abuse”.

He also suggested to Kenneally that he was trying to “resile” from evidence given on his behalf at the original trial in 2016 at which he received a 14 year sentence.

The evidence from psychotherapist Nicholas Banks was that Kenneally had a “distorted cognition” when it came to sex which he used to justify his activities. Kenneally eventually accepted the report.

The commission will resume after Easter when they will hear further evidence from him.

Ronan McGreevy

Ronan McGreevy

Ronan McGreevy is a news reporter with The Irish Times

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