Martin is to meet man abused by Fortune

A senior official at the Department of Health and Children is to meet Mr Colm O'Gorman, one of the men abused as a teenager by…

A senior official at the Department of Health and Children is to meet Mr Colm O'Gorman, one of the men abused as a teenager by Wexford priest Father Seán Fortune, next week.

It will be followed at a later date by a meeting with the Minister, Mr Martin, who has prior engagements all next week.

It is understood there will be a general invitation to that meeting for all abused by Father Fortune, and others abused in the diocese of Ferns.

Mr O'Gorman, who is director of One in Four, a UK charity based in London which assists sex abuse victims, will be in Dublin next week for an RTÉ Prime Time programme on Tuesday, which will discuss the scandal in Ferns.

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It will precede a showing of the BBC Correspondent programme Suing the Pope on RTÉ that same evening at 10.40 p.m.

Reports that just 30 minutes of the 45-minute programme would be broadcast on the station were denied yesterday by a spokeswoman for RTÉ, who said it would be shown in full.

Mr O'Gorman plays a central role in the programme which followed contact between him and a BBC reporter, Sarah MacDonald, last year.

In a letter earlier this week to Mr Martin, Mr O'Gorman said the Minister had a duty of care where the scandal was concerned.

"It is clear that this issue is a very long way from being resolved and continues to impact on the health and welfare of those affected," he said.

"There have been four suicides of young men in Seán Fortune's likely target group, of which two have now been directly attributed to Seán Fortune's appalling history of sexual abuse of young boys," he told the Minister.

He called for a public inquiry into how the Ferns diocese handled complaints of abuse by priests over a number of years.

Last night Mr O'Gorman said more people who had been abused by Father Fortune were now coming forward. He had spoken to a woman yesterday whose brother had been abused by the priest. The man died last year and only confirmed the long-suspected abuse months before his death.

Mr O'Gorman estimated the number of Father Fortune's victims as about 100, of which he knew at least a dozen.

Speaking on South East Radio yesterday, Mr O'Gorman said he was excited and delighted at the attention the issue was now getting following the BBC programme last week.

But he was "at the same time cautious, because I'm aware of how often in the past this whole issue has slipped out of public attention.

"This is a particularly emotional time for me because finally, it seems, 20 years after the abuse happened and seven years after I started to take on this fight, I can finally hand it over to the people who were responsible for that and not have to deal with it completely on my own any more," he said.

The "legal battle" he had engaged in with the church authorities was more about disclosure than compensation. "We all know by this point that the church very often settles these cases out of court in an attempt, I think, to suppress what's actually gone on. That's not something that I've been particularly interested in," he said.

He encouraged other victims of sexual abuse to seek help. "There's an excellent crisis centre in Wexford, and I think people really should consider coming forward and seeking support. You don't have to struggle on with this in silence. You can move beyond this. It doesn't have to destroy your life," Mr O'Gorman said.