Notorious paedophile 'singing priest' Tony Walsh back on the streets again after three decades behind bars
EXCLUSIVE: The taxi drove right up to the prison door at around 2.45pm and evil Walsh, wearing a black beanie hat and dark coat as well as glasses, got into the back seat
Notorious cleric paedophile and so-called “singing priest” Tony Walsh is back on the streets again - nearly 30 years after he was first incarcerated in prison.
The sicko, who since 1995 has been convicted of 38 sexual offences on schoolboys in the 1980s, was pictured leaving Dublin's Arbour Hill Prison on Wednesday afternoon in a taxi.
The taxi drove right up to the prison door at around 2.45pm and evil Walsh, wearing a black beanie hat and dark coat as well as glasses, got into the back seat. The taxi then drove off in the direction of the Quays.
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Depraved Walsh, who used the cover of the Catholic Church to prey on innocent children, was defrocked by Pope John Paul II in 1989 on the advice of Cardinal Desmond Connell and formally dismissed from the priesthood in 1996.
Now that he is back on the streets he will have to find himself accommodation after nearly three decades behind bars.
Walsh was curate in Ballyfermot, Dublin and a chaplain to De La Salle school in Ballyfermot from 1978 to 1996 when he started to abuse the boys.
The abuse of one boy from 1978 to 1983 was so extreme that he was sentenced to a total of 123 years in what is the most severe sentence ever imposed on a clerical child sex abuser in the State.
Five of the 13 counts, for buggery, attracted sentences of 10, 12, 14, 16 and 16 years each. The remaining counts, for indecent assault, brought sentences ranging from four to nine years.
As Walsh was to serve his sentences concurrently, 16 years was the maximum time he served for those offences.
In 2010 he received a nine-year prison sentence for the indecent assault and buggery of a number of children.
And in 2022 he was sentenced to four years in prison for indecent assaults of three schoolboys in the 1980s.
During one of his court hearings it was heard that the sicko told gardai he was attracted to young boys aged between 10 and 12 and “that was always the case.”
The child sex abuser, who was well-known in Dublin as the “singing priest” and Elvis impersonator, was mentioned in the Murphy Report into clerical sex abuse and it contained harrowing detail of how the sicko abused serially and continually during his time as a Catholic priest.
The Murphy Report stated “a number of complaints against him relate to his activities at these [Elvis] performances. He was even abusing children during his time as a seminarian.”
Archbishop Dermot Martin said at the time of the release of the Murphy Report, in 2010, that it was clear that Walsh’s crimes should have been dealt with earlier by Church authorities.
In one case, one of his victims, David, gave shocking evidence of what sicko Walsh did to him as a child.
He said one of the incidents took place in “a small tunnel” at the Phoenix Park, “towards the Furry Glen”, where there was “a small cream mattress”. David was raped there by Walsh. The boy “felt severe pain and cried a lot”.
Afterwards Walsh wiped him with “a purple sash (stole) he had with him”.
When Walsh picked up his jacket “a small receptacle for holding Holy Communion wafers fell out of his pocket”.
He brought David back to the presbytery, “put on Elvis records and gave him a glass of Coke”.
He then showed David “a Bible with pictures of hell and said if he told anyone he would burn in hell and never go to heaven and then he let him go home”.
However, Judge Frank O’Donnell directed the jury to find Walsh not guilty of two counts in that trial that related to the incident ‘David’ recalled as ‘David’ had given differing dates for it between his two statements to the Garda and what he insisted was the correct date in his evidence to the court.
Another cruel incident, in which Walsh raped the boy, whose wrists were tied to his ankles, as he lay over a coffee table at the presbytery, led to one of the 16-year sentences.
On that occasion David was “crying loudly” and “hysterical”.
Walsh, who had turned up the music to drown out the boy’s cries, took “about an hour to calm me down. I then went home”.
Another victim said he had been put out of the class when he met Walsh in the school corridor. Walsh followed the boy into a toilet cubicle and orally penetrated the boy before sending him back to the class “dazed and afraid”.
On another occasion he anally penetrated this boy in a laneway, telling him afterwards that if he told anyone about what happened the child would get into trouble.
In July 2022, when Walsh was sentenced to another four years in prison for indecent assaults of three schoolboys in the 1980s, Judge Martin Nolan said:
“He has done many terrible things over the years. He abused the innocence of these young boys for his own purpose. He was grossly and morally reprehensible.
“He has caused a huge amount of harm emotionally and psychologically. What he has done is evil,” Judge Nolan said.
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