Pied Piper figure spread stain of sin for 35 years

"Rot in Hell, Smyth." These were the final words spoken to the 70-year-old thrice-convicted paedophile priest by any of his victims…

"Rot in Hell, Smyth." These were the final words spoken to the 70-year-old thrice-convicted paedophile priest by any of his victims. They were shouted at him from the public gallery at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last month as he made his way from the dock to serve his final prison term.

Judge Cyril Kelly sentenced him that day to 12 years after he pleaded guilty to 74 charges of indecent and sexual assault of 20 victims in the Republic over 35 years up to 1993.

Smyth had already served two terms totalling just under three years for 43 child abuse offences in the North. There is also evidence he had abused children in Italy and Wales and America on pastoral visits. He paid $20,000 to an altar boy who he abused in America during the 1980s.

At the height of his abusing career in Ireland Smyth was a Pied Piper figure who drove around dispensing sweets to boys and girls from his car boot while spreading the stain of his sins with startling impunity.

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His technique of abuse began by tickling the children, playing childish games with them and bouncing them on his knee in front of their parents.

Only when he was alone with the children did he kiss them and force his tongue in their mouths and slip his hands down the back of their pants or up their skirts to feel their genitals.

Smyth molested his victims in his car, on trips away from home and in their schools. He even did it in their homes while their parents were in other rooms.

During last month's three-day long sentence hearing, several of Smyth's victims took to the witness box to talk about their childhood trauma. The court heard a litany of attempted suicides, broken marriages, destroyed careers, mental illnesses, difficulties with sexual orientation and relationships, hatred of priests and the Catholic Church.

Their tear-stained faces showed the depth of the hurt he had caused them. Their words showed the intensity of the anger they felt towards him.

One man looked at Smyth straight from the witness box and said: "I'd kill him, I'd kill him for everybody else."

When he was 12, Smyth had told him God wanted him to learn to masturbate him properly and slapped him on the hand because he wasn't doing it fast enough.

Another woman, who was assaulted many times by him in the parlour of her midlands convent boarding school, tried to kill herself by swallowing tablets and needles.

She told how Smyth had ejaculated on her school uniform and she had been rebuked in class the next day by a reverend mother for having a stained outfit.

Smyth sat impassively in court throughout. His final words to his victims were contained in a handwritten statement read to the court the day after the victims had recounted their abuse.

The declaration read by Smyth's counsel, said he recognised his sexual offences as "sins against God, offences against individual persons and offences against the laws of the State".

But investigating officers and several victims said they did not believe that the act of contrition was his idea, despite his completion of a course for sexual offenders while in prison.

Detectives who have questioned Smyth describe him as reasonably intelligent but emotionally "childlike," arrogant, cold and sly.

Smyth first came to the attention of the RUC in 1990. In March 1991, he was arrested, but released and left the Northern Ireland jurisdiction.

The RUC made persistent, unsuccessful, attempts to contact him at Kilnacrott over the next two years. In April 1993, the RUC issued an extradition warrant.

During the period 1991-1993, when he was wanted for questioning by the RUC, Smyth continued his abuse on both sides of the Border.

In January 1994, following pressure from the Church, Smyth circumvented the RUC's extradition proceedings by turning himself over to the RUC.

Court proceedings against him in this jurisdiction began last April when he came directly into custody in the Republic following his release from Magilligan prison where he had been beaten several times by other prisoners.