The South Jap Well being Board (SEHB) was informed of a number of situations of “inappropriate behaviour” by convicted paedophile Invoice Kenneally virtually 30 years earlier than the previous sports activities coach was convicted of abusing boys in 2015, a fee of investigation has heard.
Brian Walker (52) informed the fee of attending counselling after he informed his mom and a trainer in class of getting lifts house from Kenneally throughout which Kenneally made inappropriate options to him and threatened him with violence if he informed anybody.
The trainer in his college, Tom Meehan, was additionally a college counsellor, Mr Walker informed the fee. “I believed that might be the tip of every thing.” Nonetheless, in subsequent years he noticed different younger teenage boys in Kenneally’s automobile. “Invoice Kenneally merely moved on.”
The fee is investigating the response of the State and different companies to allegations in opposition to Kenneally, who pleaded responsible to a number of instances of kid intercourse abuse in late 2015 and is in jail for the abuse of youngsters in Waterford between 1979 and 1990.
The witness mentioned he was given lifts house by Kenneally within the mid-Nineteen Eighties at a time when he was in his mid-teens. He mentioned he had been “groomed” by Kenneally however by no means abused, and that the convicted paedophile had given cash and alcohol to teenage boys.
Marcus Stewart SC, for the fee, learn from a file from the SEHB and a observe from Dr Geraldine Nolan in relation to seeing Kevin Keating, a good friend of Mr Walker; Mr Walker; and different teenage boys regarding their allegations about Kenneally.
There was “a query of cash altering fingers” and the boys being informed by Kenneally they might be “damage or killed” in the event that they informed anybody, the observe mentioned.
Dr Nolan recorded that the boys had made allegations “actually of inappropriate behaviour” however there have been “no allegations of particular sexual exercise” and that Kenneally would must be “monitored carefully”.
Mr Walker mentioned Mrs Keating had warned different moms about Kenneally on the time. He additionally mentioned that final yr his mom had informed him that Mrs Keating was provided cash by the Kenneallys to cease elevating the matter.
One other witness, Waterford businessman Tom Murphy (74), mentioned the Kenneallys had been a really highly effective household within the metropolis, with their very own bus service, pubs, and their involvement within the Fianna Fáil occasion. Brendan Kenneally, Invoice Kenneally’s uncle, was a TD for the town.
He mentioned it was his perception the late chief supt Sean Cashman was promoted to that place with the help of Fianna Fáil and the Kenneallys, due to the Invoice Kenneally case. That was how the late garda “bought his stripes”, the fee of investigation was informed.
Mr Murphy mentioned he was informed by chief supt Cashman, who he knew very nicely, that Invoice Kenneally had been introduced into the Garda station on a St Stephen’s Day or the day after St Stephen’s Day within the firm of his uncle, Brendan Kenneally, and “left right here a chastened boy”.
He had fallen out with chief supt Cashman over this, he mentioned, and informed him that when younger individuals from poorer backgrounds stole a packet of cigarettes, they ended up earlier than the courts.
Mr Murphy mentioned he believed this occurred a few years previous to his studying that one in every of his youngsters, Barry Murphy, had been one in every of Kenneally’s victims. He believed he was informed by his son a lot later, when he was a married man, and thought this was in 2013, a time when chief Supt Cashman was lengthy retired.
Responding to Barra McCrory SC, for a few of Kenneally’s victims, together with Barry Murphy, Mr Murphy agreed it is likely to be the case that he had gone to the Garda station after being contacted within the late Nineteen Eighties by the mom of one other of Kenneally’s victims, and warned about Kenneally.
The listening to continues.
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