The failure of the Kenneally political dynasty to report serial sex abuser Bill Kenneally to the authorities when they discovered he was abusing boys was inexcusable, according to Minister of State Mary Butler.
Butler, the Fianna Fail TD for Waterford, told Déise Today host Damian Tiernan on WLR that more boys could have been saved from abuse by Kenneally if his family members including his uncle Billy Kenneally, a longtime Waterford TD, had spoken up in 1987.
“I firmly believe the Kenneally family should have acted – they were a political Fianna Fáil family and the fact that they had knowledge of the abuse in the 1980s and into the 2000s and didn’t act is inexcusable – there was a circle of secrecy,” she said.
“The commission did not find that anybody outside the circle of secrecy or the Kenneally family knew about this at a local level, at a national level, at a city level, at a county level. And I know for a fact that they did not know.”
Pressed by Tiernan, Butler agreed there was a cover-up around Kenneally’s abuse but said that it only involved four people, including three members of the Kenneally family, It did not involve the broader Fianna Fail organisation in Waterford, she said.
She refused to be drawn on whether Fianna Fáil locally or nationally should offer an apology to Kenneally’s victims but repeated that a State apology was entirely appropriate as the state and its agencies including gardaí and the health board had failed victims.
The Commission of Investigation, chaired by Judge Michael White, found there had been a serious dereliction of duty by senior gardaí when they failed to follow up on a report that Keneally had abused a boy in 1987.
Chief Supt Sean Cashman and Supt PJ Hayes met Kenneally, who admitted abusing the boy, but they felt they could not pursue the matter further after the boy’s family declined to make a statement of complaint. Gardaí advised Kenneally to get psychiatric treatment.
However, it emerged that while Kenneally did see a psychiatrist, he continued to sexually abuse pubescent boys, prompting the judge to say the Garda failure to properly investigate Kenneally “was a clear and serious dereliction of duty even by 1987 standards”.
Butler was critical of her immediate predecessor as Fianna Fáil TD for Waterford, Brendan Kenneally, saying that Judge Michael White was rightly critical of him for not taking action when he learned in 2001 that his cousin sexually abused boys.
She apologised for allowing Brendan Kenneally to canvass for her in the 2020 general election and described it as “an error of judgement” when she learned that he had called to the home of one of his cousin’s victims, causing great upset to the man and his family.
She said that Brendan Kenneally had rescinded his membership of Fianna Fail on June 9th following the publication of the Commission report, but she refused to comment further on whether he had been asked to resign or the exact circumstances of his departure from the party.
