Victim of Pedophile Priest Receives record £400k settlement: A man from Northern Ireland who was molested by Malachy Finnegan as a child has earned a £400,000 settlement which is believed to be the case’s largest payment to date.
The 51-year-old, who has chosen to remain anonymous according to Premier Christian News experienced three years of abuse at the hand of the pedophile priest whilst attending St Coleman’s College in Newry in the 1980s.
It is believed that Finnegan who taught in St Coleman’s College before taking a parish position in Clonduff, Count Down, perpetrated sex crimes against minors during a forty-year period before his passing in 2002.
The Northern Ireland diocese includes parts of County Antrim, County Down, and County Armagh. The firms said a settlement was reached in the two-year-old case after “intensive discussions and negotiations.”
Speaking about the settlement, legal representatives for the abuse survivor, KRW Law, said the settlement “is the biggest ever for a victim of abuse by Malachy Finnegan”.
KRW’s Owen Winters said the suffering the victim endured “reached a new level of depravity” and detailed “repeated abuse” including “rape during school hours”.
The Diocese of Dromore introduced a redress scheme for abuse survivors in 2021 in a bid to help the victims find recovery.
A statement from the Diocese at the time said that it “apologizes unreservedly for the hurt and damage caused to victims and survivors of any priest or church representative acting under its authority”.
“The Diocese of Dromore finds such behavior towards children and vulnerable people abhorrent, inexcusable, and indefensible,” the statement continued.
The Diocese noted also that it “is willing to commit whatever resources it has available for the purpose of redress to this scheme, even if that should exhaust those resources.”
During the past 35 years, some 70 persons have come forward with charges of abuse against the Diocese, most of which concern Malachy Finnegan. The plan, which has a ceiling of £80,000 per person, has obtained damages for 15 victims totaling almost £2 million.