I’m no danger says abuser ex-priest

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Belfast Telegraph

Tuesday, 30 August 2011

A former Roman Catholic priest exposed as a serial child sex abuser has claimed he poses no “threat or danger to children”.

Bill Carney was accused by the Murphy report, which was published in Ireland two years ago, of abusing at least 32 children.

Carney, who was ordained in 1974 and defrocked in 1992, left Ireland and was traced to Spain before settling in Northleach, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Earlier this year the Gloucestershire Echo newspaper published an article revealing he was living in the home of his ex-wife, close to a children’s playground.

The newspaper published a letter Carney had written in response to that article.

“Your article depicts me as a threat or a danger to children. Nothing could be further from the truth,” he wrote.

“For over 30 years now I have been a recovering alcoholic and the only mark against my name is three points on my driving licence for doing 38mph in a 40mph area. In these 30 years there has not been the slightest suggestion of anything that would indicate that I am a danger to any child.”

The report by the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese, which was headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said Carney had pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault in 1983 against two altar boys.

“He was one of the most serious serial abusers investigated by the commission,” the report stated. “There is some evidence suggesting that, on separate occasions, he may have acted in concert with other convicted clerical child sexual abusers.”

Carney has never been tried for any of the allegations made in the report.

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Clerical abuser asks for ‘second chance’

The Irish Times

31 August 2011

PATSY McGARRY

ONE OF the most serious child sex abusers among priests in Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese, Bill Carney (61), has written to an English newspaper pleading that he is “a good honest Christian living as best I can one day at a time . . . all I ask for is a chance”.

In a letter to his local Gloucestershire Echo paper, he wrote that “for over 30 years now I have been a recovering alcoholic, and the only mark against my name is three points on my driving licence for doing 38mph in a 40mph area”. He said that “in these 30 years there has not been the slightest suggestion of anything that would indicate that I am a danger to any child”.

He said British prime minister David Cameron had said he gave former News of the World editor Andy Coulson a second chance, and that “everyone does deserve a second chance”.

He said an article in the Gloucestershire Echo on May 22nd depicted him “as a threat or a danger to children. Nothing could be further from the truth.” He had delayed responding to the May article “as I have needed some time to cool down”, he wrote.

The Echo article reported that he had moved to a property in Northleach, near Cheltenham in the Cotswolds, home of his former wife Joan Clayton (70). The paper had been contacted by a man who said Carney was living near a playground at Northleach and wondered whether his two young children would be able to use it again.

On hearing of the Murphy report findings in 2009 on her husband, Ms Clayton began divorce proceedings. Last May her son Paul, from a previous relationship, told The Irish Times that as part of the divorce Carney had been awarded £100,000 (€114,600).

He said at the time his mother’s marriage to Carney, after he was dismissed from the priesthood, had lasted about 10 years. Carney had turned up on her doorstep two weeks before the interview claiming he was getting treatment for heart problems and asked whether he could stay. Describing his mother as “a nice, quiet, gullible old lady”, he said she relented as she felt sorry for Carney.

Ordained in 1974, Carney served as a priest in Dublin until 1989 and was dismissed from the clerical state in 1992 following a canon law trial in Dublin. Described in the Murphy report as “a serial sexual abuser of children, male and female”, it found there were “complaints or suspicions of child sex abuse against him in respect of 32 individuals. There is evidence that he abused many more children,” it said.

One Response to I’m no danger says abuser ex-priest

  1. Sylvia says:

    There’s no such thing as a second chance at childhood for Carney’s victims, is there? But he believes he’s entitled to a second chance? And by that he means that the public doesn’t have a right to know that he is a serial child molester? And he’s angry because they now do?

    My goodness, it sounds as though he wasn’t even honest about his many past ‘indiscretions’ with that poor soul who married him.

    Maybe he hasn’t laid a wayward hand on a child. I don’t know. I do know that I certainly would want to know his whereabouts if I he were living in my neighbourhood. And I do know that I wouldn’t want or trust him around children. That’s his own doing. No need to be angry. It’s his own doing. Why does he not understand that?

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