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THE FAILURE OF two senior gardaí to conduct a proper investigation into the activities of paedophile Bill Kenneally has been described as “a clear and serious dereliction of duty” even by the standards of the late 1980s.
A report into how the State responded to horrific allegations surrounding one of Ireland’s worst sex predators, also found that there was “a missed opportunity” to act in 1985 after a 14-year-old boy walked into a garda station and reported he had been sexually assaulted by the former basketball coach.
The teenager was told that he was too young to make a statement and no steps were taken to contact his parents or bring him home.
The Commission of Investigation report into how Waterford-based Kenneally’s catalogue of abuse was handled, stated it is now known that 11 boys were being sexually abused by him in the same year the boy tried to make his complaint.
The report also found that “the failure of the South Eastern Health Board to act on child protection” after a paediatrician filed a report in 1989 recording that two patients had disclosed that Kenneally was sexually abusing boys “was a lost opportunity to stop Bill Kenneally’s continuing illegal activity and to produce accountability much earlier than 2012/2013″.
In 2016, the serial abuser was jailed for 14 years, and in 2023, received another four-and-a-half year sentence for indecent assaults on five boys, to run consecutively to the earlier term.
Commission Chairman, Michael White, said that while “there is no doubt Bill Kenneally received objectively favourable treatment in 1987/1988,” there was “no evidence of widespread collusion that would indicate any finding by the Commission of State Collusion and/or Conspiracy”.
He added that this finding “is not to underestimate in any way the seriousness of the dereliction of duty in the original investigation of 1987/1988″.
The report, which marks the end of an eight-year Commission of Investigation, found that in late 1987, “knowledge of some of his activities became known in Waterford to two senior Garda officers, and some other gardaí, the Principal of the largest secondary school, De La Salle, a retired politician, a senior clergyman, a psychiatrist, and to some parents of victims”.
In addition, a senior South Eastern Health Board paediatrician, a GP and other parents were informed of matters that made them suspicious that Kenneally sexually abused children.
The final report was sent to cabinet this morning and has been published online this afternoon.
The retired politician mentioned in the report was former TD Billy Kenneally, a paternal uncle of the predator, while the senior clergyman, another uncle of the abuser, was the late Monsignor John Shine, who was the brother of Bill Kenneally’s mother Marie.
The Kenneally family, William the grandfather, his son Billy Snr and his son Brendan Kenneally were active and elected Waterford politicians either as TDs, Senators, City Councillors and Mayors from 1952 to 2011 for the Fianna Fáil party, a period of 59 years.
This was described in the report as “a significant achievement, probably unparalleled in Irish political life”.
Bill Kenneally, when giving evidence to the Commission in 2024, volunteered that he had been approached about the Waterford City council seat vacated when Brendan Kenneally, his cousin, was appointed a Minister of State in 1992. Part of the approach to him was that he would likely become Mayor of Waterford in a few years if co-opted to the Council.
He declined, agreeing with the suggestion that “he had skeletons in his cupboard”. Kinneally did not state who was behind the approach.
Bill Kenneally continued to canvas for Brendan Kenneally at elections and assist in the tally at election counts for decades after Billy Kenneally senior first learned that he was sexually abusing boys.
During a public hearing of the Commission in 2024, Brendan Kenneally accepted in evidence that knowing Bill Kenneally was an admitted paedophile, he continued to allow him to canvas for him at general elections and to act as a tallyman at election counts up to 2011.
The Chairperson subsequently put it to Brendan Kenneally that “a number of victims as adults were very upset when he came to their door canvassing”.
The report also examines how An Garda Síochana became aware of Bill Kenneally’s illegal activities in 1987.
It documents a complaint made by a father of a victim in November 1987 and the response of the then acting Chief Superintendent Sean Cashman and Acting Superintendent P.J. Hayes.
The father went into the crime unit office in Waterford Garda station and made a complaint about the sexual abuse of his son by Bill Kenneally, but was insistent that his son would not make a formal complaint by way of Garda statement.
He alleged his son had been assaulted by Bill Kenneally, did not elaborate on the nature of it, but said it happened in De La Salle College and that Kenneally was a basketball coach there.
As well as contacting the crime unit, the father made direct contact with then acting Chief Superintendent Sean Cashman.
Mr Cashman stated in an interview with the Commission that he got the impression from the boy’s father that there could have been ten or twelve boys who were victims of Bill Kenneally’s abuse at the time, but the father only mentioned three names.
Mr Cashman called the former TD Billy Kenneally Senior, uncle of Bill Kenneally. The report notes that “he informed him that a complaint had been made and that his nephew was named as the culprit”.
Bill Kenneally attended Waterford Garda Station on 30 December 1987, accompanied by Billy Kenneally and Monsignor Shine, where he was taken into a private room for a meeting with Cashman and Hayes.
The Report said that “it should have been obvious to acting Supt P.J. Hayes that he had a conflict of interest”. The report notes that Hayes was a close friend of Shine, who was also an uncle of Bill Kenneally. Hayes also knew Billy, the former TD, and Bill Kenneally’s own father, Paddy.
While arrangements were made for Bill Kenneally to attend the station on that day, the report found that by 27 December 1987, arrangements were already in train to have Bill Kenneally seen by a psychiatrist, Dr Michael Kelleher.
Mr Cashman, in his various accounts and evidence, accepted that he was the person who made the suggestion to refer him, but “he took no active part in setting it up, that was left to the two uncles, primarily Monsignor John Shine”.
Kenneally left Waterford Garda Station, having been interviewed by and made admissions to senior gardaí, including a reference to handcuffs, but continued to abuse boys, including what the report called the “horrific” abuse of a boy of 12, the son of a good friend, who he had carefully groomed. That sexual abuse continued through to adulthood.
The report states that Bill Kenneally was not arrested, nor his house or car searched. Despite the absence of formal statements there was enough evidence to legally ground a proper suspicion and thus enable arrest and search.
Because of the reference to handcuffs, he could have been arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment and his house could have been searched. It is definite that Polaroid images would have been found, it stated.
It was 25 years before the extent of Bill Kenneally’s offending came to the notice of An Garda Siochana again when the 2012 investigation commenced.
The crimes included physical restraint perpetrated on a number of the boys in secluded areas where they were tied to trees and in Bill Kenneally’s own home, when they were suspended from a ceiling or handcuffed. These crimes of false imprisonment were separate to the charges of abuse.
The Commission stated that it did not underestimate the challenge An Garda Siochana faced in 1987.
The Terms of Reference specifically charged the Commission to examine the factual situation from a particular perspective: “The adequacy or appropriateness of the response from An Garda Siochana should be measured by reference to the prevailing standards and guidelines applicable at the time”.
The report found: “The failure of acting C.S. Cashman, and to a lesser extent acting Supt P.J. Hayes, to conduct a proper investigation into the activities of Bill Kenneally, was a clear and serious dereliction of duty, even by 1987 standards.”
The chairman noted the evidence by four others alleging that they had been sexually abused after 30 December 1987 and said that the paedophile’s referral by Monsignor Shine and Billy Kenneally Senior to Dr Michael Kelleher for treatment in January 1988, “was of no assistance to the victims of Bill Kenneally’s sexual abuse and acted as a smokescreen”.
The report noted that “one of the most disturbing series of events” in evidence heard by the Commission was the sexual abuse of two brothers in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The report found that the boys’ parents “knew the wider Kenneally family well” and “held them in high esteem”. Their mother had “considered him a kind and generous man”.
The report found that the father “because of the economic situation in Waterford in the 1980s was unemployed for 6 or 7 years”. As a result, they “both were appreciative of Bill Kenneally’s generosity”.
The report noted that Kenneally used his relationship with the family and his understanding of the home to his advantage, and it made one of the sons “an easy target”. The report noted that he was both “trapped” and “held ransom and he could not tell his parents”.
In 2001, one of the brothers confided in his partner, now wife, that he had been sexually abused by Kenneally. She was very angry that he was being let into the family home where she was living with her young daughter. She confronted Kenneally some days later and warned him to keep away from her family.
In his testimony to the Commission in 2023, that was heard in private with just lawyers present, the boys’ father said that after he learned about the abuse in 2001 he “cut him (Kenneally) out of his life completely”.
The family did not wish to report the abuse to gardaí, but they wanted something to happen to stop Bill Kenneally further abusing children.
The partner contacted the then-serving TD Brendan Kenneally through his constituency office and told him that his cousin had sexually abused her partner.
The report found that she “displayed great courage and moral clarity in confronting Bill Kenneally” and encouraging her partner to tell his parents and visiting Brendan Kenneally to try and get him to do something.
The report found that Brendan Kenneally did not report this to any formal agencies. Instead, he arranged for psychiatric treatment for his cousin.
The Commission stated that “another referral of Bill Kenneally to a psychiatrist in 2001 was nonsense” in light of the woman’s “request to him to do something effective on child protection”.
The report also found that Brendan Kenneally’s actions in 2001 at “the very least fell substantially below the standards the Commission would expect from a TD of Mr Kenneally’s experience”. The Commission reported that “it cannot definitively on the balance of probabilities establish knowledge by Brendan Kenneally of Bill Kenneally’s sexual abuse of boys prior to 2001”.
The report records the timeline of the investigation that led to Kenneally eventually being jailed in February 2016.
The investigation commenced with the first complaint of Jason Clancy on 5 December 2012 and continued to the conclusion of Bill Kenneally’s second trial on 22 May 2023, thus overlapping with the work of the Commission for four and a half years.
There were substantial delays because of the judicial reviews undertaken by Bill Kenneally.
The report found that “the quality of the overall investigation was superb, culminating in two separate criminal trials on indictment, where ultimately Bill Kenneally pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting 15 boys and received a lengthy custodial sentence”.
The Chairman stated that “there was no mala fides [bad faith] or cover up on the part of An Garda Siochana” and the Commission received extensive cooperation from the Waterford District and An Garda Síochána generally.
Lawyers acting on behalf of seven of the victims had, during the course of the inquiry, raised concerns the men had surrounding the investigation that commenced on foot of Jason Clancy’s initial report to gardaí in 2012.
The report detailed the various issues it looked at, primarily “operational decisions, (such as seizing exhibits, questioning Bill Kenneally about the identity of victims, timing of arrest,) resource allocation, alleged leaks, communication, and the interaction between the 2012 and 1987 investigations”.
The Report found that “unfortunately these issues led to a breakdown in trust between An Garda Siochana and the two victims who initially decided to come forward” in 2012.
There are many references throughout the report to Bill Kenneally’s involvement in basketball, both as coach and in management.
Bill Kenneally was a founder member with others from in or around 1973 to 1975, of the Thomas Francis Meagher Basketball club. He both played and coached and was also involved in administration.
The evidence that the Commission has heard indicated that the illegal sexual acts were committed during Bill Kenneally’s involvement with the club, and his involvement coaching basketball in De La Salle secondary school from the late 1970s onwards.
Twelve youths whom he coached in basketball made allegations against him of serious sexual assault.
The then school principal, Brother Columba, was warned that Kenneally had been accused of abuse in 1987. One victim showed him a photo of “a naked boy tied up” as proof.
The report found that Brother Columba approached the boy again in early 1988 and he told him that he was still being abused. Brother Columba told the boy that “at the end of the season May/June, Bill Kenneally would be removed from coaching basketball at the school,” leaving him to remain on school grounds for a further six months.
The report found that the South Eastern Health Board’s failure to act on child protection was a “lost opportunity” to stop Kenneally’s horrific abuse.
The South Eastern Health Board “should have acted”, it said, on a 1989 report prepared by consultant paediatrician Dr Geraldine Nolan, who met for therapy sessions with Kevin Keating – who was sexually assaulted by Kenneally – and Brian Walker, who was groomed.
That report detailed how Kevin Keating was brought to the paedophile’s house and tied up, there were threats of violence, of being told they would be killed or hurt if they told anyone.
Mr Walker stated that Bill Kenneally engaged in a lot of double talk, and he alleged he was warned by Kenneally: “If you ever tell, I’ll beat the shit out of you.”
In his report, Justice Michael White flags that there is currently no offence on the books covering where a public official may have perverted the course of justice, not by criminality, but by “serious dereliction” of duty.
It was a challenge, he said, to “distinguish between incompetence and serious dereliction of duty requiring criminal sanction”.
The issue should be referred to the Law Reform Commission for “urgent consideration”, the judge concluded.
Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan said in a statement that he wished to “acknowledge the bravery of the victims of Bill Kenneally and thank them for their perseverance and strength in seeking truth and accountability”.
The Fianna Fáil TD said he would now reflect on the findings of the report. O’Callaghan added: “It is also important that we allow the victims the time to read and consider its findings.”
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