Bill Kenneally survivor Jason Clancy tells of horrific sexual abuse by basketball coach (Part 1)
6/15/202630 min
Bill Kenneally, a former accountant and basketball coach from Waterford City, is one of Ireland's worst-ever sexual predators. He's also a member of the southeast's most powerful political dynasties, a collection of Fianna Fáil TDs, senators, city councillors, and mayors who served for almost sixty years, right up until 2011. His influential connections didn't stop there.
As far as we know, Kenneally began his horrific campaign of sexual abuse on young boys when he was just seventeen years old. He was eventually brought to justice in 2016 when he was sentenced to fourteen years in prison. In 2023, he received another four-and-a-half-year sentence for indecent assault on five boys. For the last eight and a half years, a commission of investigation has been examining how state authorities, the Catholic clergy, politicians, sporting organisations, and others dealt with the allegations of sexual abuse made by young teenage boys against Kenneally from the 1980s onwards.
The commission, chaired by Michael White, heard over five thousand pages of testimony. Their official report had, has stated how there were missed opportunities and a clear and serious dereliction of duty by gardai, even by the standards of the late '80s.
Today, Jenny Friel speaks to sexual abuse survivor Jason Clancy, who along with five of his childhood friends and fellow survivors, Kevin Keating, Gerry Mullane, Barry Murphy, Colin Power, and Paul Walsh, went public in their efforts to get the full truth about Kenneally's heinous crimes and why it took so long to get him stopped.
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