Brendan Smyth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Northern Irish priest. For the Australian politician, see Brendan Smyth (politician).

Fr. Brendan Smyth, c. 1965

Brendan Smyth (1927–1997) was a member of the Norbertine order of Catholic religious.

Originally from Northern Ireland, he became notorious as a child molester who used his position as a Catholic priest to obtain access to his victims. As a result, over a period of over 40 years, Smyth systematically raped hundreds^[1] of children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States.

The Norbertines, also known as the Premonstratensians, which Smyth had joined in 1945, were aware of Smyth's crimes as early as the late 1940s, yet they failed to report him to either the Garda Síochána (the Republic of Ireland's police force) or the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the RUC, the police force in Northern Ireland). Instead he was moved from parish to parish and between dioceses whenever allegations were made against him. In some cases, the order did not inform the diocesan bishop that Smyth had a history of sexual abuse and should be kept away from children.

His arrest in 1994 led to the collapse of a Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government when the incompetent handling of an extradition request from the RUC by the Irish Attorney-General's office led to a further delay of some months in Smyth facing trial. An award-winning UTV Counterpoint programme on the scandal by journalist Chris Moore, followed up by a book, accused the head of the Norbertines and the Archbishop of Armagh of mishandling the case, and the Norbertines of negligence and a failure to tell others of his longstanding child molestation, enabling Smyth to sexually abuse large numbers of children freely for forty years. When Smyth died in prison in 1997, the Norbertines held his funeral early in the morning, and covered his grave with concrete to deter vandalism. In the aftermath of the scandal, Ireland's Mass attendance rate plummeted from 68% to 48% in less than a decade. Many people attribute this decline, at least in part, to the child sex abuse scandal that erupted after the exposure of Smyth's crimes.

On October 27, 2005, a victim of Smyth succeeded in having the title 'Reverend' removed from his gravestone^[2].