Convicted sex abuser Bill Kenneally dies in hospital aged 75

Convicted serial sex abuser Bill Kenneally has died in hospital aged 75, The Irish Times has reported.

His death come just over a week after the publication of a report on the response by State agencies to his abuse of a boy in Waterford in the 1980s.

The former sports coach was 10 years into a near 19 year sentence for the sexual assault of 15 teenagers in Waterford in the 1970s and 1980s and had been suffering ill health in recent weeks.

He had been transferred from the Midlands Prison to hospital where he died.

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A Commission of Investigation into complaints against Kenneally found a serious dereliction of duty by senior Garda officers when they learned he sexually abused a boy in the late 1980s.

Judge Michael White, who chaired the Commission of Investigation, examined the response by the Garda and the South Eastern Health Board to a report in 1987, that Kenneally – a member of a prominent Fianna Fáil political family in Waterford – was abusing pubescent boys.

Jason Clancy, one of the victims of Bill Kenneally, has described his death as “a strange release” which had given him closure and said that he was now looking forward to the future.

Speaking on Newstalk’s Claire Byrne show, Clancy said Kenneally’s death was “more closure” following the Commission’s report recently.

“I suppose this just gives us extra closure now as well. It's like everything has come to full circle, you know. I don't feel anything really. I'm not jumping up and down that he's dead, I'm not delighted.

“Equally, I'm not sad. It's just, it is what it is.”

The publication of the Commission of Inquiry report last week had been “total vindication” for the victims, so today’s news was just confirmation that “the whole thing has come full circle and that there's closure, and I suppose, look, he did what he did and he's just going to have to face the music when he meets his maker".