A post-mortem on a 13-year-old boy, whose body was exhumed as part of a long-running investigation into alleged child abuse at a reform school, has revealed he died of natural causes, gardaí said today.
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William Delaney attended the Christian Brothers' Letterfrack Reformatory School in Connemara, Co Galway, for three years but died shortly after returning home for a summer holiday in 1970.
At the time, his family were told he had died from meningitis.
His body was exhumed from Saint Kieran's cemetery in Kilkenny last week and examined by a state pathologist after his former schoolmates told detectives William had been assaulted by staff at the school.
A member of travelling community, he was sent to the school by court order in 1967.
A Garda spokeswoman said: "The post-mortem examination showed he died of natural causes. Reports in newspapers that there was evidence of blows to the head were made before the examination had been completed."
Allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the school first surfaced in 1996, when a man complained to gardaí in Dublin he had been assaulted as a pupil.
About 135 former pupils have made allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the school - which date from the 1940s through to the 1970s.
It is understood others have come forward since the decision to exhume William Delaney's body was reported last week.
PA