Ex-priest who asked to be laicised guilty of indecent assault

A former priest who wrote to the Pope asking to be laicised because of his history of “abusing young boys” has been found guilty of indecently assaulting a secondary school student in the 1980s while the priest worked as a choirmaster and music teacher.

Henry Moloney (77) with an address at Kimmage Manor in Dublin was found guilty on Tuesday evening, on the unanimous verdicts of a jury, of seven counts of indecent assault, all of which took place within one school year in the 1980s.

He will be sentenced on December 15th, following the preparation of a victim impact report, and has been remanded on bail.

An eighth charge, that he indecently assaulted the boy in an area near the boy's home during a St Stephen's Day visit during that year, was withdrawn from the jury by judge Thomas Teehan. The former priest had pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The injured party told Clonmel Circuit Court last week that the abuse started within a week or two of the beginning of a school year in the 1980s at Rockwell College after Fr Henry Moloney, as he was then, asked him to join the choir.

Moloney was the choirmaster and played the organ in the school’s chapel and the first incident was in the organ gallery, the victim told the court.

“I remember him pulling me in close to him the first time. He would start touching off me. I suppose I knew it was wrong but it was hard to back away, the position I was in,” he said last week.

Henry Moloney put his hand under the victim’s shirt and down his trousers, to his buttocks, the court heard last week. The victim told the court he knew it was wrong then but thought, “I can’t tell anyone because no-one will believe me over a priest” as “priests were the pillars of society at the time”.

Moloney asked him at a later date to go to his room in the college and abused him there, initially with “a lot of petting on his part” and later, “it got worse” in Moloney’s room, “to the point where you would call it rape, buggery,” the victim said last week.

In his closing speech yesterday, David Humphreys BL, prosecuting, said the victim hadn’t told his wife about the abuse for years and had over 100 sessions with a counsellor.

“It also took Henry Moloney a long time to talk about these matters,” Mr Humphreys said. “It wasn’t until 45 years later, after he started his abuse of young boys, that he wrote to the Pope and told the Pope about it.”

He quoted from Moloney’s letter of 2014, which stated “I have greatly sinned over 10 years, from 1969 to 1979 in my abusing young boys,” and went on to say “from 1980 to 1991 there were sporadic betrayals”.

Patrick Gageby SC, defending, said the letter to Pope Francis in which he "has admitted sexually abusing young boys and boys in his care" did not mean that this particular case was proven.

Judge Thomas Teehan also referred in his charge to the jury to Henry Moloney’s 2014 letter to Pope Francis, “seeking laicisation and acknowledging that he had committed, in the past, breaches of trust whereby boys were entrusted to his care and he sexually abused them”.

There was no outward show of emotion from Moloney as the seven “guilty” verdicts were read out last night, after the jury deliberated for just over two hours, and he sat impassively in the courtroom while, some rows behind, the victim and his wife wept and hugged.