Signing you in

There was no collusion but there was a “clear and serious dereliction of duty” by two senior gardaí and “objectively favourable treatment” shown to a man from a “very decent, well-thought-of family”.

The curse of deference for the decent family is one that has blighted too many lives in Ireland, and Kenneally was better appointed than most: he counted not just a monsignor, John Shine, but a Fianna Fáil TD, Brendan Kenneally, in his immediate family tree.

No collusion and nothing to see here – just a 14-year-old boy inexplicably turned away from Waterford Garda station in 1985 after he told the officer at the counter he had been assaulted by Kenneally. The garda said he was “too young” to make a complaint.

There was also an “obvious conflict of interest” by one senior garda, PJ Hayes, and a “completely irrational decision” not to further investigate Kenneally after he admitted to abusing boys in 1987 by another, Sean Cashman. These men “seriously misled” their colleagues about Kenneally.

There was no collusion because there did not need to be. Shame and social status were the potent currencies of the time, and Kenneally had both on his side. The remarkable thing about the ease and brazenness with which he terrorised, by his own estimation, “around 20″ boys aged between 11 and 17 in Waterford from the 1970s onwards was how little he did to conceal it.

Kenneally understood that it is actually very easy to hide something no one wants to see, and there was a lot the Ireland of the 1980s and 1990s did not want to see. It was simpler for most adults to not notice how strange it was that a man in his 30s was whizzing around the county in a blue Nissan Bluebird full of teenage boys.

When the principal of Waterpark College, Maurice O’Connor, became concerned about this odd man pulling up outside his school at lunchtime to collect a pupil, he spoke to the boy’s parents and the principal of neighbouring De La Salle College, where Kenneally coached basketball. But his inquiries seem to have hit a brick wall of shame and obfuscation. O’Connor is one of the very few adults who comes out the report well.

Wherever teenagers hung out, the Nissan Bluebird would turn up. Kenneally would hop out, open the boot and hand out bottles of booze to boys. He gave them envelopes stuffed with cash – £67, £7, £17, £37, £17.27. Seven must really have been his lucky number, because he got away with it for 25 years.

Still, he wasn’t taking many chances. When he got the boys alone and naked, he took Polaroids of them, and kept them in a large cash box or the glove compartment of his car, a repulsive insurance policy. As his belief in his own untouchability grew, Kenneally’s proclivities got darker. It wasn’t enough for him to abuse, intoxicate, humiliate and threaten the boys, he needed to terrify them too. He handcuffed them to his bedpost, tied their feet with orange twine, or hung them from an exercise bar. He instructed them to tie him up and perform sexual acts on him. In the winter of 1986, he drove some boys to the woods in Castlemartyr, made them take off their clothes, tied them to trees in the dark and left them there.

[ Bill Kenneally: The basketball coach whose crimes had ‘lifelong impact on victims’Opens in new window ]

The abuse did not stop after Kenneally admitted it to gardaí in 1987 and was sent on his way with a referral to a psychiatrist. It just became less public, more concentrated on a smaller circle.

The children in Bill Kenneally’s orbit did their best to protect each other. As early as 1980, the older boys in Viewmount Park were warning younger ones off Kenneally. Several teenage girls who were friendly with the boys sensed something was off. They knew a man in his 30s feeding their friends drink and holding porn screenings in his livingroom was wrong. They saw some of the boys crying and overheard strange, worrying jokes about being tied up. At one point, two girls discovered there were boys in Kenneally’s house. They marched through the back door and found one watching porn in the livingroom and another drunk and “very irritated” in the bedroom. They did what so many adults somehow failed to do and got the boys away.

One garda who played basketball remembered boys on the team saying they didn’t want Kenneally in the dressingroom. Paul Walsh, one of the courageous survivors, told the commission how this same garda took him aside when he was 14 and said: “Your man Kenneally, mind yourself with him ... there is a file as long as your arm on him in the barracks.” The garda denied having used those words and the commission agreed he was unlikely to have referred to a file when there was none.

What is both astonishing and unsurprising about it is how blatant it all was. It was only when Jason Clancy heard in 2012 that Kenneally was still coaching children and walked into a Garda station as an adult to report him that an investigation was launched.

[ State blindness to abuse outlined by Bill Kenneally reportOpens in new window ]

As late as 2023, Kenneally was still tormenting his survivors. At his final trial in April that year, he pleaded guilty to 13 sample counts of abuse of five boys – but only after first pleading not guilty to all 266 counts, forcing his victims to go through giving testimony and being cross-examined.

There was no collusion; just children abused, tortured, terrified and poisoned by alcohol and shame, while the adults and institutions that were supposed to protect them looked the other way.

Background and Career\nFintan O’Toole was born in Dublin and grew up in Crumlin. He graduated from UCD with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy in 1978. He has held a number of other distinguished roles in journalism, academia and the arts before and since joining The Irish Times, including:

Books\nFintan O’Toole has written multiple acclaimed books on subjects ranging from Irish identity and history to global politics, including:

Journalism Awards and Notable Achievements\nFintan O’Toole has received several high-profile and prestigious honours for his writing and insight, including: