An Abused Priest

By AM Tuesday, November 29, 2011

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I now know that false witness is crushing, so hurtful, it is devastating. In fact, it does so much damage, damage which may never be fully repaired – Kevin Reynolds.

So another pervert priest has been unmasked, this time one that raped a young girl while working as a missionary in Kenya three decades ago and who fathered a child as a consequence. Prime Time in its Mission to Prey production of last May brought the priest’s behaviour to public attention and the disgraced cleric was sent packing into exile in the global village of Whisperdom, his reputation in tatters.

Great current affairs story but for one crucial flaw. Kevin Reynolds was neither a pervert priest nor a rapist. Nor did he father a child. The establishment of his innocence came much too late to spare him the anguish and public humiliation that went with his ‘exposure.’ Such is the price of justice that only for the pro bono services of Robert Dore & Co Solicitors, rendered in the service of protecting the weak against the strong, Kevin Reynolds’ portrait would still remain on public display in the infamous gallery of Ratzinger’s Rogue.

Although awarded a substantial sum of money as a result of being ‘grossly defamed’ by RTE he will hardly consider it worth the experience. Probably of greater consolation to Kevin Reynolds was the standing ovation his parishioners gave him at mass on his return to ministry.

Just what had this individual to do to establish his innocence? He could hardly have gone further than he did. He offered to undergo a paternity test. Prime Time declined to wait, despite also being in possession of emails from Reynolds’ bishop in Kenya supporting the accused priest’s account. As stated by the Irish Missionary Union, this is inexplicable. He was simply not allowed to make his case, despite it being a loser takes nothing initiative by the priest. There was enough wrong in the country at the time that to await the outcome of a simple paternity test was hardly going to deprive Prime Time of serious news stories. By rushing in guns blazing on this one, the seriousness of future stories is now certain to be called into question. To boot, Maeve Lewis of the One In Four Group claimed it would adversely impact on those victims who had genuine claims to make.

Moreover the decision to nail the missionary and pin unsubstantiated allegations on him has denied RTE the terra firma from which it could claim to have blundered. The decision to broadcast was a policy matter not a mere error of judgement by a journalist.

The Catholic Church has little basis for complaining about the relatively modern phenomenon of open and harsh criticism thrown its way. Irish society has a right to complain that for too long the Church was let off the hook because of the power and influence it was able to wield. But that hardly amounts to a supposition that every priest, or even the vast bulk of them, is fair game; that it is just a matter of pushing an open door because people are all too prepared to think the worst about a priest to the extent that so many in Irish society believe that 20 per cent of Catholic priests are child molesters without a shred of evidence to back such figures. 

If the investigation into Kevin Reynolds was genuinely a search for truth about his behaviour in Kenya, then Reynolds, if his defence was nothing other than mere bluff, would all too easily have been found out once the result of his paternity test came through. Journalism in some cases has assumed that there is a level of gullibility in society that removes the need for journalists to remain diligent, industrious and fair. Throw the morsel out there and let it gather its own momentum. The prey’s position has been so undermined in advance that nobody will hear its cries of distress anyway. 

This has led to a claim by the Association of Catholic Priests, of which Kevin Reynolds is a member, that elements of the media harbour deep anti-Catholic and anti-priest bias.  The ACP has a credibility that the Church hierarchy has not because its members have often been outspoken on the matter of hierarchical malpractice. Its voice cannot be dismissed as some of its critics might wish. Sean McDonagh of the Association of Catholic Priests said, ‘we’re not asking for special treatment, we’re just asking for truth, fairness and justice.’ Hardly an extravagant demand, the key sentiment being no special treatment which brings the clergy into line with the norms of secular society.

Nevertheless, the ACP would appear to be mistaken in its analysis. Church figures are generally questioned with vigour less because of bias and more as a result of the involvement of the Church hierarchy in cover up. The more vigorous the line of questioning, the better the position of the body being questioned if they come through it.

A society that demands to know the truth about its clerical institutions can hardly sit back with an ‘it happens’ attitude once it is fed falsehoods about the same institution or the people that staff it. It is reassuring that The One In Four Group welcomed the reestablishment of Kevin Reynolds’ reputation and criticised RTE for having made the charge against him. In doing so it acknowledged that this was most certainly 'the case of the abused priest.' 

The ruination of Kevin Reynolds is not what journalism should be about. An institution as powerful as journalism should never strive to gratuitously impair the reputations of the vulnerable. The handling of this case has put journalism on the defensive. It must leave many in the profession uneasy that rather than protect people from injustice it has unjustly targeted them. Journalism should safeguard society from abuses of power rather than being the source of power which abuses. This is an outcome that was so easily avoided.