Suicide victim had begged Taoiseach to launch probe

Saturday April 22nd 2006

SUICIDE victim Peter McCloskey made an impassioned appeal to the Taoiseach to initiate an inquiry into the diocese of Limerick only three months before he killed himself on April 1.

An email requesting to meet Bertie Ahern was one of many increasingly desperate communications sent by Mr McCloskey towards the end of last year in an attempt to find vindication over his claim of having been sexually abused by a priest from Co Clare.

Sensationally, his correspondence includes a plea to all the Catholic bishops to hold a canonical probe into the way the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray handled his abuse case.

The correspondence obtained exclusively by the Irish Independent shows that Mr McCloskey requested the meeting to give "indisputable evidence" that he was brutally raped by a priest in Co Limerick when he was a 10-year-old altar boy.

Evidence

Mr McCloskey further told the Taoiseach that he had "indisputable evidence" of a cover-up in his case by the Bishop Murray.

The bishop has denied that there was any cover-up.

In an email to the Taoiseach, dated November 26, Mr McCloskey begged the Taoiseach to meet him any time after December 16.

The correspondence indicates that after years of allegedly not being listened to, Mr McCloskey felt encouraged by publication of the Government Inquiry into clerical child sex abuse in the diocese of Ferns.

This was followed up by calls from the Taoiseach and the Irish Catholic bishops urging victims to come forward.

"I am certain that you will agree to this meeting," Mr McCloskey wrote.

"I am certain that you will want to act in a proper manner in dealing with the failure of state institutions that have failed to assist me," he wrote.

"I did report the matter to An Garda Siochana in 1980 but they failed to respond to my complaint at the time."

Last night, a Government spokesman confirmed that the Taoiseach received the email from Mr McCloskey and this had been acknowledged to him. However they gave no further details. It was learned last night Mr McCloskey sent copies of his email to An Garda Siochana, Child Abuse Special Investigations, at the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

In this email, Mr McCloskey drew their attention to correspondence from the Professional Standards Office in Sydney, in the Catholic archdiocese of Sydney.

This correspondence contained evidence that the late Fr Daly, who served in the archdiocese of Sydney, as well as dioceses in America, England and Scotland before being accepted for the Limerick diocese, had been accused of consistent conduct unbecoming of a priest.

He also emailed to Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, accusing his predecessors of falsehood in not telling the diocese of Limerick the real story about Fr Daly.

COMMENT, P14

? Irish Independent