Posted online: Dec 8th, 2008

By Dermot Keys
dermot@letterkennypost.com

A sickening collection of donations is reported to be waiting for convicted paedophile, Eugene Greene, upon his release from the Midlands Prison after serving just eight years of a 12 year sentence.
No official date has been given for the former priest’s release but it is believed by local sources to be today (Thursday). Greene pleaded guilty to over 40 sexual assaults over 22 years on boys as young as seven-years-of-age in the Raphoe diocese. Despite this an account was set up for Greene and is believed to contain at least €50,000.
“We can only suppose those who have contributed to this fund are motivated by a misguided compassion for a disgraced priest who may have served in their own parishes,” said Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), the lay organisation set up to support survivors of clerical sexual abuse. The organisation slammed church and state leaders for allowing a climate in which donations of this scale can be made to a “self-admitted child rapist.”
VOTF called for the Bishop of Raphoe, Dr Philip Boyce, to condemn the collection and demanded that the money be given to a child abuse charity. It also criticised the authorities’ response to the abuse that occurred in Donegal up until 1985 and called for a state enquiry.
“Donegal’s politicians, especially those in ministerial office, have also been disgracefully silent over these atrocities, and should have been calling long ago for a state inquiry into what happened in Raphoe, and into why there are no diocesan records of Greene’s behaviour when there is now compelling evidence that it was known to some senior clergy as early as the 1970s.”
There are concerns about where Greene will go upon his release. Sources said that he would initially go to a missionary society in Co Wicklow before returning to Gortahork. However a spokesperson from the Kiltegan Fathers, the order to which Greene belonged confirmed to The Letterkenny Post that “he’s definitely not coming here.”
The Letterkenny Post contacted Bishop Boyce for comment but he was out of the country. Former Bishop of Raphoe, Dr Seamus Hegarty, who was Bishop at the time of the abuse, was also unavailable for comment.