Much was known and had been published about the clerical abuse of boys and girls in Co Wexford in the 1980s and 1990s before last week.
In March 1995 The Irish Times Security Correspondent, Jim Cusack, reported that gardaí had begun to investigate allegations by young men that they were sexually abused by a priest in Co Wexford during the 1980s.
April 1995: The Irish Times reported that gardaí investigating allegations of sexual abuse of boys in Wexford in the 1980s had arrested a priest and questioned him.
September 1995: Jim Cusack reported that details of a £28,000 cash deposit in a Belgian bank had come to the attention of gardaí investigating allegations of sexual abuse by a priest in Co Wexford. The priest was Father Sean Fortune and the deposit was understood to have been made after a report of the sex abuse investigation appeared in The Irish Times.
November 1995: The chief executive officer of the South Eastern Health Board, Mr John Cooney, confirmed that a number of girls attending a national school in Co Wexford had made allegations in late April 1988 to the school principal regarding indecent behaviour by an adult towards them. This was Father Jim Grennan of Monageer. Mr Cooney was responding to a notice of motion from health board member and councillor Mr Gary O'Halloran, requesting that the board establish an independent inquiry into all aspects pertaining to the board in a Co Wexford case of child sexual abuse.
December 1995: RTÉ screened a Prime Time programme on the handling of abuse allegations made by schoolgirls in Monageer in 1988. The Garda superintendent in charge of investigating the allegations, Supt Vincent Smyth, told Prime Time the Garda had conducted a "thorough and diligent investigation on foot of a communication from the South Eastern Health Board". All the families concerned were interviewed but "no firm evidence was forthcoming", he said, to proceed with a case.
He also told the programme that Bishop Brendan Comiskey had not interfered in any way with the Garda investigation.
March 1999: It was widely reported that Father Sean Fortune was remanded by Wexford Circuit Criminal Court to the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum, Dublin, on charges of sex abuse against young boys. However, because of a strike there he was sent to Mountjoy prison. He was granted bail by the High Court and later in the month was found dead in his home in New Ross, having committed suicide.
September 2000: A Message From Heaven - the Life and Crimes of Father Sean Fortune by Irish Times journalist Alison O'Connor was published. It revealed how Father Fortune was a master manipulator who lied, cheated, bullied and abused, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.
March 2002: The BBC documentary Suing the Pope which dealt with the years of sex abuse of boys in the 1980s and 1990s by Father Sean Fortune was broadcast. Four men abused as teenagers by the priest told their stories publicly for the first time. The programme was also screened by RTÉ last night.