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Comiskey's turbulent priest
Sunday, October 30, 2005 - By Alison O'Connor
The man had been paralysed from the neck down in a car accident. He lay in a hospital bed unable to move. But he was still able to speak, and the story he told sounded more incredible as it went on.

Lying in the ward in the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire, Sean Cloney spoke of a priest who had lied, stolen, bullied, cheated and abused.

Back then, in themid-1990s, the stories about Fr Sean Fortune seemed simply too incredible to be true. From the moment the priest arrived in Fethard-on-Sea in south Wexford, Cloney was amazed at the way he wreaked havoc in the townland of Poulfur.

Cloney sensed from the beginning that there was something wrong with the new curate.

“He was the greatest liar that I ever met - a horrible man. He had all the deadly sins except sloth,” said Cloney, before explaining that he had his own trouble with the clergy in the 1950s.

Cloney was the man whose early married life was captured on celluloid in the film A Love Divided a few years ago. The movie told the story of a boycott of Protestant businesses in Fethard-on-Sea in the 1950s, after followers of Ian Paisley abducted Cloney's Protestant wife Sheila and their daughter to prevent her having to attend a Catholic school.

Despite being in a hospital bed, Cloney was one of the very few people in the area willing to speak about Fortune at that time. At that point, the priest had departed Fethard almost eight years earlier, but he had left it divided and it remained so.

There were other individuals with their own tales of those turbulent years, people who had made courageous efforts to bring Fortune's actions to the attention of the Church authorities. Given the divisions in the parish, however, they preferred to remain unidentified.

After the priest left Fethard-on-Sea, they followed his progress - particularly from 1995 to 1999, during which time he used every legal trick in the book to delay facing 29 charges of sex abuse against young boys. In March 1999, Fortune committed suicide by taking an overdose of pills, robbing those boys – who were by then young men - of the opportunity to see him found guilty.

The stories about Fortune continued to circulate over the years. This was no great surprise to Cloney and others in Fethard-on-Sea. After all, they had made representations to Bishop Brendan Comiskey almost from the moment he arrived in the Diocese of Ferns in 1984, but to no avail.

As well as a number of sex abuse-related complaints, they had worn a path to the bishop's door to tell how, among other things, Fortune was stealing money from people on AnCo courses; had put curses on people who crossed him; shown banned movies to teenagers; put a lock on the gate of the graveyard; and refused to give communion to those who displeased him.

Much was known of Fortune's crimes, but the Ferns Report, published last week, filled in some remaining pieces of the jigsaw and lent further detail to the trail of destruction that the man left during his time as a priest.

But it also highlighted Comiskey's failure to remove Fortune from a position where he was able to abuse young boys.

Given the inquiry's circumstances, the criticism is understated but devastating when viewed in its entirety.

The first known allegation of abuse against Fortune was in 1976, when he was a seminarian at St Peter's College in Wexford. The report reveals that it was made by a 13-year-old boy who alleged inappropriate touching, oral sex and masturbation, which later progressed to “full, violent rape'‘. The school principal reacted angrily to this boy when informed of what had happened.

The report by Mr Justice Frank Murphy details some attempts at psychiatrically assessing Fortune, which were ordered first by Bishop Donal Herlihy and subsequently by his successor Comiskey. The results varied, depending on how much the psychiatrist knew of Fortune's history in advance and who had ordered the assessment.

But there was certainly enough warning about his propensities for any new bishop who happened to peruse the file on him.

In 1986, Comiskey himself was presented with the first allegation of Fortune abusing young males in Fethard-on-Sea. But the bishop told the inquiry that there was “no question of removing a priest who had been accused of sexual abuse in those days'‘.

It was then believed that such priests could be treated successfully. It took sometime, Comiskey said, before he realised that paedophilia might be incurable.

In 1986, when the bishop received “concrete proof'‘ of the abuse from the young man identified in the report as “Simon'‘, his goal was to remove Fortune from Fethard to receive treatment and then obtain guarantees from his medical advisers before returning him to parish duties.

Two more years would pass before Fortune was finally moved. The bishop admitted that he had become more concerned, but “did not feel he could institute canonical proceedings against him [Fortune] because of warnings from the Vatican that bishops had to proceed very carefully and make sure they had hard evidence before removing a priest'‘.

“It is difficult to understand,” states the report, “how Bishop Comiskey failed to read the signals at this stage and address himself to the problem of protecting children.”

Fortune eventually left Fethard-on-Sea in 1987, and was sent to England, where Comiskey wanted him to attend a residential treatment centre for abusers. However, he refused.

A counsellor who treated Fortune recommended “a residential treatment course as a matter of some urgency'‘, and described him as a “pathological liar'‘. No such treatment was ever received, said the report.

Fortune returned to Ireland in early 1988 without Comiskey's permission. The bishop made an appointment with Dr FP O'Donoghue, a consultant psychiatrist in St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin, whom Fortune saw three times.

The psychiatrist suggested that Fortune be put on sexual suppressants and be allowed to return to parish work, on the conditions that he would have no responsibility for any youth organisation and that he would be subject to continuing supervision.

In June that year, Fortune himself decided to attend the practice of psychotherapist Dr Ingo Fischer, who informed Comiskey that Fortune's “sexual orientation was heterosexual, his personality was stable and that he would be fit for parish work'‘, subject to continuing treatment from Fischer.

In December 1988, Fortune attended a consultant psychiatrist in London. The psychiatrist, Dr JRW Christie-Brown, who gave him a relatively clean bill of health, had not been briefed on “the very serious allegations that had come to the attention of the diocese'‘. The inquiry described Comiskey's failure to convey Fortune's full history to the psychiatrist as “extremely negligent'‘.

Following a meeting with Fortune in July 1988, the bishop wrote a memo - later found in his own files - stating that he had asked three priests to examine the “very serious allegations made against Fr Fortune and denied by him'‘, and to make recommendations.

But, Comiskey told the inquiry, “this never led to anything'‘, because Fortune appointed a solicitor and the bishop was “advised by a canon lawyer that the process should be discontinued'‘.

In that memo, the bishop recorded his decision not to appoint Fortune to another parish, on the basis that supervision would be required. But he subsequently did just that.

“Bishop Comiskey stated in correspondence that his concern was that Fr Fortune's very priesthood was at stake and, whether he liked it or not, Fr Fortune was ‘one of our own',” said the report.

So, despite the numerous complaints and warning signs over the previous years, Fortune was allowed to make a full-time return to parish life in September 1989, when he was appointed to the Co Wexford village of Ballymurn.

Despite the recommendation of Dr Fischer, no further treatment was undertaken by Fortune at this stage. As part of the job, he was appointed chairman of the board of management of Ballymurn National School, and gave classes in religious instruction in the Bridgetown VEC.

Serious problems arose during Fortune's time in Ballymurn. Complaints were made in 1991 by a number of parents about the content of religious classes given by Fortune. They said he encouraged children to tell lewd jokes, used sexually inappropriate language and “asked prurient questions while hearing confessions'‘.

When confronted once again by Comiskey, Fortune vehemently denied the allegations.

He was forced to leave his VEC position in 1991, but remained as curate and on the primary school board until December 1995, at the nomination of Comiskey.

“He also continued to give classes there until he was arrested by the gardai in March 1995,” said the report.

When asked why he had failed to remove Fortune, Comiskey told the inquiry that he was helpless in the face of Fortune's refusal to cooperate, and that canon law offered no assistance in a situation such as this.

The bishop made the point that, before Fortune's appointment in Ballymurn, no allegation of child sexual abuse had been levelled at the priest.

However, while no allegations of child sexual abuse had been made after Comiskey's intervention in 1987, the inquiry said it did not accept the logic of the bishop's argument.

“Moreover, a very regrettable fact is that allegations were made against Fr Fortune, which related to his rape and abuse of young male adults after his appointment to Ballymurn, some of whom had been the victims of abuse by Fr Fortune as children,” stated the report.

Its conclusion was that Fortune's appointment to Ballymurn was “ill-advised and dangerous'‘.

In February 1995, Colm O'Gorman, the founder of the One in Four charity, made a complaint to Detective Garda Pat Mulcahy of Wexford, alleging sexual abuse by Fortune over a two-year period in the early 1980s. It was this allegation that finally led to Fortune leaving Ballymurn. According to parishioners, he said Mass in an extremely hurried fashion and was “collected by two guys and bundled into a car'‘.

Comiskey then sent the priest on administrative leave.

Shortly afterwards, a letter from Comiskey was read out at Masses in the village. It paid warm tribute to their former curate: “Fr Fortune, for his own personal reasons, sought to be relieved of his post as curate, and will not be returning to Ballymurn; it does not reflect in any way on his standing as a priest.”

Comiskey also said in the letter that he was aware that the people of Ballymurn would join him in thanking Fortune and expressing appreciation for all the good that he had accomplished.

In its conclusions, the inquiry states that it believes the bishop was correct to seek medical and canon law advice on Fortune, and accepts that he did not feel assisted by this advice.

“Nevertheless, the ultimate decision-making power rests with the bishop and he must take responsibility for those decisions,” the report said. “In the view of the inquiry, the evidence available to Bishop Comiskey was compelling and dictated the immediate removal of Fr Fortune from ministry.”

Following Fortune's suicide on March 13, 1999, Comiskey's spokeswoman said he had a “monstrous'‘ number of files relating to Fortune, which went “from floor to ceiling'‘.

Comiskey has had more than six years to inspect those files, as well as others pertaining to priests such as Fr Jim Grennan in Monageer, who abused young girls preparing for their confirmation on the altar. But, as is clear from the bishop's evidence to the inquiry, the passage of time has not lessened his views about how he had handled these allegations.

The media, with which he had once had such an excellent relationship, managed to convince people that he had mishandled child sexual abuse cases and then tried to cover them up, he said.

“Bishop Comiskey said to this inquiry that he did not mishandle any sex abuse case.

“He said that he did his best with the resources he had at the time, and that one of his experiences in reading the files for the purposes of this inquiry had been, on a personal level, to be pleasantly surprised at how well he did, looking back over 20 years,” the report stated.

Sean Cloney died in October 1999, at the age of 73. But despite his first-hand experience of Comiskey's dealings with Fortune, he would no doubt have been shocked, as others were last week, at such self-delusion from the once hugely admired Bishop of Ferns.