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THE SOLICITOR FOR Father Kevin Reynolds has said that the priest is awaiting ‘with interest’ the outcome of the meeting between the Communications Minister and the Board of RTE on Tuesday.
Speaking for the first time after the release of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland report into the controversial Prime Time Investigates programme, Robert Dore said the priest is not out for revenge, and that dealing with the Board is an issue for Pat Rabbitte.
“Father Kevin is not a vindictive person… He personally is not out for revenge, as it were, but that is a matter for the Minister,” said Dore.
The solicitor paid tribute to Anna Carragher who conducted the BAI investigation for producing a ‘considered’ report into the matter.
Speaking to Claire Byrne on the Marian Finaucane Show on RTE Radio One this morning, Dore said it was sad that RTE reporter Aoife Kavanagh had resigned – but said that given the contents of the report, she had no other alternative.
The Prime Time Investigates programme wrongly accused the Galway priest of fathering a child while he served as a missionary in Africa in the 1980s. Reynolds brought a defamation case against the broadcaster last year which was settled in the High Court.
The Minister for Communications has requested a meeting with the chairman and board of RTE on Tuesday morning to discuss the findings of the report in full.
Pat Rabbitte has condemned the programme as a ‘shoddy, unprofessional, cavalier, and damaging piece of work‘ after the release of the BAI report into how the programme came to be broadcast.
The BAI fined RTE €200,00 for breaching the Broadcasting Act and Prime Time Investigates reporter Aoife Kavanagh, who presented the Mission to Prey programme, resigned from RTE last night.
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Fantastic wonderful country we live in with justice for a priest that was wronged. Can we now please show the same fervour in delivering justice for the victims of clerical abuse. A young woman resigned her job for her mistake. Cardinal Brady. . . follow her example please!
Susie,
Why not just sympathise with both?
Just for the record I’m not a church goer and I’m glad to see the Catholic Chuch loosing it’s grip on power in Ireland. From having kept myself read on the developments in the Fr. Reynolds case it’s clear that his good name was dragged though the mud in a vicious way that has cause him deep psychological damage. It annoys we when people dismiss one persons suffer by saying “but what about the children priests abused” as if this means that any suffering that any priest (most of whom are good men) has gone though is meaningless in comparison. Fr. Reynolds has not once went after anyone’s head, nor has he asked the media to constantly follow the story. It’s being followed because it’s very much in the public interest to follow it. Please be more considered of peoples suffering in the future when you comment. Don’t just dismiss someones suffering because you don’t think it’s as bad as someone else’s. That’s a childish attitude to have.
I would not blame Father Reynolds if he were out for revenge he would be more than entitled to be. But he has shown himself to be a more compassionate man and that says more for him
Who says “build a bridge and get over it” sad…….
Sean I did , Why ?
That has very little to do with this,.Susie. It would be wrong to simply say he should ‘ build a bridge and get over it’. If this happened to you or i, we wouldn’t be so forgiving. I have heard of priests commiting suicide over allegations like this, what if fr. Reynolds had done that and then it was discovered that it was just RTE out on a witch hunt? The catholic church is a completely discredited and dysfunctional organisation, but no element of the media should be free to destroy someones life like this. If he had been a Mechanic or a Fireman, we would probably have more sympathy.
Susie why don’t you apply for a job in rte you seem to have the perfect mindset for a job in current affairs.
Brendan Why don’t you address me ! Under my own post …. Your sarcasm is not lost on any one …
If the political establishmebt are such fantastic defenders of child protection I still await for the calling of the resignation of Sen. David Norris who condones pedestry alongside defending sex abusers such as Ezra Nawi, Cathal O’Searcaigh & Roman Polinski
Fr Reynolds got his compo, People have resigned their jobs and some redeployed… Now Fr. Reynolds please build a bridge and get over it . What about the Catholic church standing up and taking responsibility for their endorsement of child abuse for decades….. What are they doing about it ???
You are right that the Church should take responsibility and take action, but that is a separate issue.
Fr Reynolds was branded by RTÉ in the same way as those who abused and covered up abuse, but he has nothing to do with that. He is fully entitled to full recourse and we as citizens are entitled to ensure that we are not fed these types of lies again by the national broadcaster.
This is a very important issue. RTÉ has massive power and shouldn’t abuse it.
I think he built a bridge months back.
Will the churches be empty tomorrow? No of course they won’t. The brainwashed flock will still turn up in droves! By turning up tomorrow, after whats happened this week, those people are surely condoning Cardinal daly’s behaviour throughout this whole saga! Correct me if I’m wrong though!!
He was COMPENSATED , A Lot . People have been reprimanded , and resigned their jobs. RTE have abused their power, in more areas than this . I agree that it was wrong and serious , but come on , this is just such an insult to all the victims of abuse by the church and their agents . He awaits with interest ??? What exactly does that mean ? What about all of us awaiting with interest whether or not Cardinal Brady will resign his position and , whilewe await with interest whether the church will pay the rest of the compensation to the said victims.
Susie, how is it in any way an insult to victims of abuse that a man wants to protect his good name and doesn’t want to be wrongly branded in the same way as the abusers?
You are mixing up two completely separate issues here. Father Reynolds is not an enemy of abuse victims.
When his solicitor says that he “awaits with interest”, he is trying to say that Fr Reynolds has not got a vendetta against anyone at RTÉ but is naturally interested in hearing what the outcome will be. He is indicating that he is not pushing this any further, but will be interested to see what will come of the Minister’s meeting with the RTÉ board.
Yes I kinow they are two very different issues, I am not disputing that , but I think that a child being buggered by a full grown man and (lets be honest here) all that entails …and then the abuser goes on to be protected by his colleagues….It is really not the same as a man ‘s good name being damaged … especially as he was already apologised to and well compensated to boot. So James with all due respect to you , sincerely, I will save my sympathy for the children who are still seeking apologies from the holy catholic church for having been sodomised, buggered, raped by full grown men , when they should have been protected in their care
“Fr Reynolds got his compo, People have resigned their jobs and some redeployed”
Well Susie, lots of victims of abuse got compo, people resigned and lost their jobs and rather notoriously a lot of the abusers were “redeployed”. Would you be as flippant with them? Maybe you think being branded a rapist is some trivial matter?
You say that you know they are two separate issues……..so why did you link them in the first place?
What a heartless and unfeeling comment. Need I say more.
Well I think it is pretty heartless that there are victims of clerical rape STILL waiting for apologies from the holy catholic church and its agents .This man was wronged I never sai dotherwise so please …. less of the selective reading !
Susie you have dug yourself a hole on this one and can’t get out. Stop digging and look at all the thumbs down you are getting.
Susie – there have been numerous apologies to the survivors of abuse.
Your original comment also said that the church endorsed abuse. Really, let’s just keep to some semblance of reality here. Various bishops grotesquely mishandled abuse. Their negligence has lead to very real damage to children. But these were cases of mishandling. They were never a situation of endorsing abuse, giving it the thumbs up and praising it.
There was enough mishandling in the past which deserves criticism without making stuff up.
Susie to fair thats double standards. I totally dispise the catholic church & agree with about child abuse but what was done to this man was terrible. I often tried to put myself in his shoes & how recovered I dont know but neither money or resignations would fix it for me.
Thumbs down ? Look the man was wronged , he was apologised to , compensated , and still has a solicitor coming out speaking on his behalf. The thing is this he is a man , and educated too. The difference is this , he was wronged as an adult and as such can process it as an adult . Rememer the victims of clerical abuse were little kids , uneducated or badly educated , so don’t tell me that I am digging a hole or that I may not be popular , or that I have double standards …. This man has a voice and when he was wronged he exercised his right to use his voice and be heard . While the victims of church rapists , were little children who were told they were nobodies and nothing and had to wait to become adults to even realise that they could object . Me? Double standards ? I do not believe so .
James you are correct. RTE has power & should not abuse it. The church has massive power & did abuse it. Why is the Church not brought to task as fervently as RTE were?
You are misinterpreting me. The Church should be brought to task ten times more fervently than RTÉ was, because the damage perpetrated by the Church was much greater than that of RTÉ.
My point is that just because the Church has committed more serious wrongs, does not mean that Fr Reynolds’s case is not important on its own merits.
Both are very important, separate, serious issues.
Close RTE down now they are so arrogant and disrespectfull to the Irish people.
RTE paid Father Reynolds a 7 figure sum as compensation. We don’t know how much exactly. It could be 1 million. It could be 9.99 million. Given that a significant portion of RTE’s revenue comes from the license fee, I think the public, as stakeholders in RTE, are entitled to know how much was paid out.
Why? Because we pay tax?
Well, I would have thought it was obvious. The license fee payers fund RTE to a large extent. Therefore, they’re entitled to know how much RTE us paying out.
Should we also be able to determine what the tax is spent on then? What level of compensation to this man is too much by the way?
All we know is that Father Reynolds was paid a 7 figure sum. It could be 1 million or it could be 9.99 million. That’s a potential difference of 8.99 million. Since the licence fee payers contribute about half of RTE’s revenue, then the license fee payer could be paying up to half of that difference, nearly 4.5 million euro. That’s a lot of doe.
Personally, I think it is a scandal that the license fee payer isn’t given a exact figure.
People complain that RTE has been letting them down. Here’s one reason why -a lack of transparency on the part of RTE.
It’s a good thing Prime Time were foolish enough to make a scientifically verifiable claim. If they’d just said that he was a rapist they might well have got away with it, and their victim’s life would be ruined
Interestingly enough the sindo are reporting that ‘the severance details’ of ms kavanagh’s resignation are to be ironed out next week.
Journal
Amazing my comment about the woman who originally accused the priest of being the mother of her baby ,has been removed …Did I hit a nerve or something ?
Dont worry about your comments been taken down.Keep them coming your an interesting person and in this house we enjoy your input. We dont allways agree but thats what its all about.
Frank
Thank You :)
That is how I feel too . It is all in being able to comment .
A hetrosexual priest??
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