Bill Kenneally’s death ‘a strange release’, abuse survivor says

Kenneally, pictured in 2024, as he was brough to testify at the inquiry into his crimes. Sasko Lazarov

Waterford

Bill Kenneally died behind bars this morning while serving a 19-year prison sentence.

A SURVIVOR OF Bill Kenneally’s horrific abuse has said he doesn’t “feel anything” about the paedophile’s death but is “glad to see” he lived to see the inquiry report published on the case earlier this month.

Kenneally died this morning at Midlands Prison while serving a 19-year sentence for the abuse of 15 boys. He had been under palliative care in recent weeks.

It was only last week that a State inquiry about the wider case was published , examining how authorities dealt with reports of his crimes in the decades before he was finally brought to justice.

The major state report into the case found the failure of two senior local gardaí in Waterford to conduct a proper investigation into the activities of Kenneally was “a clear and serious dereliction of duty” even by the standards of the late 1980s.

Colin Power, one of the survivors who campaigned for the establishment of the Commission of Investigation, told The Journal that it was “extraordinary” that Kenneally had died almost 48 hours after survivors were told they would receive a state apology during a meeting with justice minister Jim O’Callaghan.

Colin Power outside Leinster House in Dublin following a meeting survivors held with the justice minister on Tuesday. Alamy Stock Photo

Alamy Stock Photo

The inquiry had heard evidence from Kenneally himself about how he had kept abreast of the news, in particular for coverage about himself through the prison’s newspaper service, and Power said this meant he likely learned of the developments over the past week.

“I’m glad he was around to serve the last 10 years in prison, but I’m also very happy that he was around for the verdict of the Commission of Investigation that took eight and a half years,” Power said.

‘There isn’t much there’

For Power, he explained that he had little reaction when news came through this morning of his abuser’s death.

“There isn’t much there. It doesn’t have an impact on me, good bad or indifferent,” he said.

Kenneally, added Power, “destroyed a lot of lives over the years and had huge collateral damage on people”, particularly on the family members of victims.

“For me, when he went to jail in 2016, he hasn’t been in our thoughts,” Power said.

Instead, the focus for Power and other campaigners had been how victims “were let down by state bodies, political party members in Waterford and senior clergy”, who it became clear had known about the abuse but failed to report Kenneally to property authorities.

Power added that he was happy that Kenneally also lived to see “that his family members were also criticised by the report”, referring to the role played by Kenneally’s late uncles Billy Kenneally and monsignor John Shine, to his cousin Brendan Kenneally.

All were found to have had knowledge of the abuse allegations.

Both Billy Kenneally and Brendan Kenneally had been Fianna Fáil TDs for Waterford and were part of a family dynasty in the city.

The inquiry found that, when informed of his cousin’s crimes in 2001, Brendan Keneally did not report this to any formal agencies.

Instead, he informed his father, Billy Kenneally, who in turn told him to contact Shine.

Brendan Kenneally stated at the inquiry that he took this course of action due to the victims not wanting to go further and involve gardaí.

This led to psychiatric treatment being arranged for Bill Kenneally – the second time that Shine had taken this course of action, following similar in the late 1980s.

This decision, the report found, at “the very least fell substantially below the standards the Commission would expect from a TD of Mr Kenneally’s experience”.

The Commission further 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 Irish Prison Service confirmed that there had been a death of a person in custody at Midlands Prison earlier Thursday morning.

Reacting to the death, O’Callaghan said that Kenneally had caused much damage because of his “very serious and heinous” crimes.

“There’s a tradition in Ireland that we don’t speak ill of the dead, but I have to say it’s hard to stick to that tradition in respect of the death of Bill Keneally, and that’s all I’ll say in respect to that,” O’Callaghan told reporters in Dublin this morning.

O’Callaghan reiterated his plan that the victims will receive an official state apology no later than July.

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.

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