Helen McGonigle, 48, was just six years old when Father Brendan Smyth, a notorious sex offender from Co. Cavan, first abused her.
McGonigle, now a successful attorney in Connecticut, says Smyth destroyed her family. She blames Smyth for the death of her sister and brother and the demise of her beautiful mother.
After years of suppressing the memories of the horrendous abuse, McGonigle is now dealing with her past and hoping other victims will do the same.
McGonigle, whose maternal grandparents were from Co. Kerry, was living with her family in East Greenwich, Rhode Island when her childhood was ripped apart at the seams.
Like any good Catholic family of their time, the church and clergy were to be highly respected. Helen was taught to obey church teachings and respect church leaders . . . including the new parish priest, Smyth.
The McGonigles were members of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church and she went to school where Smyth worked.
Helen wasn’t the only sister to encounter Smyth’s evil ways. The Cavan priest also sexually abused her older sister Kathleen.
In the past few years, both Kathleen, 48, and her brother Gerard, 53, died of drug overdoses. McGonigle claims it was the abuse Kathleen suffered at the hands of Smyth that made her dependent on antidepressants.
Gerard, she told the Irish Voice, suffered from depression because he felt guilty he was unable to help his family during these terrible years.
It was finally her sister’s tragic death in 2005 that lead McGonigle to face her worst nightmares, nightmares from the past she thought she would never need to resurrect.
“It was because I observed my sister rapidly deteriorating and fearful for her life that I began my investigation into the past about our childhood in Rhode Island,” said McGonigle during a lengthy interview with the Irish Voice.
While her sister was ailing, McGonigle’s father said accusingly, "It was that priest from Rhode Island that gave your sister alcohol that started her problems.”
Not only did this statement shock and frighten McGonigle, it got her thinking back into her past. Was Smyth really responsible for his sister’s problems?
“People who do not walk in these shoes cannot comprehend how it (abuse) impacts adults and can be life threatening as in the case of my family,” said McGonigle.
Smyth, who died in jail in 1997 from a heart attack at the age of 70, was first introduced to the McGonigles in 1967 by Helen’s grandmother, who was residing with the family in Rhode Island and had struck up a friendship with the new parish priest. They shared a common love for the Irish language.
“They were able to converse in Gaelic, something foreign to us in the U.S.,” recalls McGonigle.
Smyth was invited into the McGonigle home to give it his blessing. He gifted them with a crucifix from his Norbertine Abbey, Holy Trinity in Co. Cavan.
He was an instant hit with the family. However, it didn’t take Smyth long to expose his dark side.
In 1968, McGonigle said Smyth was caught molesting children in her parish and sent to Purdysburn Mental Hospital in Northern Ireland for treatment.
After his time was served in Ireland, Smyth was allowed to return to Rhode Island, said McGonigle.
“It was during that visit in the summer of 1967 that Smyth learned of the bizarre death -- supposedly blood poisoning from stepping on a bobby pin -- of my uncle Gerry Gerard O'Connor in 1947 while he was a seminarian at St. Mary's Baltimore,” explains McGonigle. He would later use this to get to Helen.
Exploiting the family’s tragedy and witnessing how distressed her grandmother and mother were over the loss of Gerry, Smyth, when reintroduced to McGonigle after he returned from Northern Ireland in her first grade year said, "You can call me Gerry like your uncle and your brother.”
This was the start of the abuse, which lasted four years.
McGonigle, now divorced with one child, said from the start Smyth appeared jovial and playful. He told the family to call him Father Gerry. He was everyone’s friend.
“He had a clever way of making things better for kids at our very grim school. Some of the older nuns were especially mean and cranky,” McGonigle recalled.
“Smyth would breeze into a classroom and come up with ideas like having an ice cream cart at the basketball games and then selling the extra ice creams to us kids during the school day as a special treat.”
During the abuse, McGonigle knew nothing but fear. Smyth told her she would "end up like the body in the woods" if she ever told a soul about what he was doing to her.
“I took that as a real death threat and was terrified and confused and very young,” she says.
McGonigle also witnessed Smyth molesting her sister. They had a bedroom with a door directly to the outside that he could enter.
Smyth’s evil antics didn’t stop at the McGonigle sisters either. Their mother also spent time in a mental institution.
According to McGonigle’s childhood neighbor who she located after 36 years, in 1968 her mother caught “Smyth sodomizing a little boy behind the stone wall and she shouted, ‘What are you doing to that little boy.’
“Smyth charged at her and yelled, ‘Get back in the house this is church business,’” McGonigle said.
In 1969 McGonigle’s mother was found hysterical on the front lawn of their family home half naked, screaming, "The Pope owes me!" Her brother was called home from school to address the situation (her dad was out of state on business).
“My brother, now deceased, based upon his personal observations and being 15 or 16 believed my mom was raped and it was by Smyth,” said McGonigle.
By June 1970 her mother was having a meltdown. She spent one month in June of 1970 at Butler Hospital in Rhode Island.
“Gerry witnessed the deterioration of my mother and that was very difficult for him. So much responsibility was on his shoulders as an early age to protect our family while my dad was traveling,” she said.
“Smyth knew when my dad was away because the car was gone from the driveway and my mom did not drive. When this all surfaced for our family in 2005, my brother had a great deal of difficulty coping with it.”
Ironically, said McGonigle, her grandmother seemed to have a sense of what went on in the clergy. In letters, McGonigle later discovered, hand written by her grandmother to her Uncle Gerry, she warned him of “those seminarians and priests that will try to get into your bed.”
Although she doesn’t have any proof, McGonigle said she is “highly suspicious” that it was her grandmother and her mother that reported Smyth as a sexual abuser in 1968.
“This I suspect through circumstances and do not have hard proof,” she said.
The abuse stopped when the family moved from Rhode Island in 1973 but the scars were left for life.
McGONIGLE got on with her life. She put her abuse behind her and did her best to lead a normal life.
It wasn’t until her sister’s death five years ago that she began to delve into their pasts. She began to question why her sister suffered from depression in the first place.
After a little investigating she too discovered and remembered that Kathleen was a victim of Smyth’s lurid acts.
After burying her sister McGonigle took time to deal with her own issues. In November the Irish government’s Murphy Report was released, resulting in a press conference in Boston in December.
“At the last moment I decided to blow up my photo from first grade and the one of Smyth from 1994. Both of those photos resonate with people and they wound up on the front page of the Metro section of the Boston Globe,” said McGonigle deciding it was time to go public with her story and let other victims know they weren’t alone.
“I was inspired by a very kind man name Paul Kellen in the Boston area who with my permission has been carrying my poster around to rallies all over the place. Paul even took my picture to see the Pope during his last visit to New York and Washington, D.C., and Paul is often outside the Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston with my picture.”
Not wanting to let Smyth ruin any more of her life, McGonigle reported the sexual abuse inflicted on her to the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island in 2006. They told her she wasn’t the first to report Smyth.
“I was informed that I was the sixth to come forward, yet newspaper accounts that I located indicated there were no problems whatsoever in our parish,” she said.
McGonigle attended a meeting where she said the Vicar General, Paul Theroux, of the Providence Diocesan, offered her $25,000 compensation, or she could “privately arbitrate with a cap of $50,000 (meaning there would be no public record and everything would once again be kept secret).”
McGonigle became infuriated with the financial offer.
McGonigle said the diocesan victim outreach coordinator, Michael Hansen, told her to “just send us all your bills."
“I refused their hush money,” said McGonigle.
The Diocese of Providence has paid for therapy and medical expenses McGonigle has incurred as a result of the abuse by Smyth.
McGonigle, who still has a case pending against the Diocese of Providence, realizes that it’s too late for Smyth to be brought to justice, but she longs for the Catholic Church to recognize the abuse he inflicted on the children of her parish while he served his time there.
“I would like bystanders and victims alike to come forward with information -- not just about Brendan Smyth -- in any case where they suspect child sexual abuse or child abuse is occurring,” she said.
“I also would like to see living pedophiles and those who have been complicit in their crimes prosecuted, and that includes clerics. It's mind boggling that just because a pedophile wears a roman collar he escapes criminal prosecution.
“The double standard has to stop and people must report to civil authorities, the police and child protection, not the church. The Catholic Church will only cover it up.”
McGonigle encounters clergy abuse even through her work. She is currently litigating a case of sexual abuse in the clergy for a deceased client, allowing her insight into the working of the church.
“I am having a first hand glimpse of the strategies and tactics used by the Catholic Church,” said McGonigle.
McGonigle does not attend Mass anymore. “I cannot attend church, and in my situation it would be against doctor's orders. Due to the stress brought about by the sexual abuse inflicted by Father Brendan Smyth, I had a grand mal seizure at age eight at Palm Sunday mass at Our Lady of Mercy,” remembers McGonigle.
“Once this all surfaced for me, and I had not had a grand mal seizure since I was eight, after some 39 years, I had another grand mal. The altar, white robes and smell of paraffin from the candles is all too triggering for me. Even the letters on the crucifix over Jesus -- "INRI" to me as a child registered as In Rhode Island -- that is a place of suffering,” she said.
McGonigle has her own personal relationship with God.
Smyth was convicted on 91 counts of child molestation – 17 in Northern Ireland and 74 in the summer
McGonigle isn’t included in this number. And undoubtedly, there are more just like her.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.supersurvivor77 | Jan 28, 2012, 03:26 PM EST
CATHOLICABUSESURVIVORSNI.COM--- he ruined 3000 lives of children , but who cares cardinal brady loved him and protected him,so does the establishment in its continued cover up of the roman catholic church child sex abuse scandal paid for by the state, hypocrites liars and dog licking vomit. we salute your bravery helen theyre all afraid over her of you.
barneyjo | Aug 03, 2011, 07:09 PM EDT
@Carroll09 - "There was also a report in Ireland,though it was good news so it didn't make the headlines,that most of the dioceses are now in fact MORE than compliant with child protection procedures" - If only it were so, but regrettably it is not. As I understand it, the Irish Church's own Child Protection body has only carried out audits of four diocese. Up to the present moment, NONE of the reports of these Audits have been made public, as the Church Agency requires the permission of the Bishop of each Diocese before it can do so. It is generally accepted that there are significant concerns around several diocese which include Limerick and Raphoe in Donegal. Thankfully the new legislation to be introduced by the Government will allow and empower the statutory agencies to carry out audits in Diocese which cannot clearly demonstrate full and verifiable compliance with the church guidelines and statutory legislation.
Temerity | Apr 25, 2010, 11:47 PM EDT
SingleDonald It is not that we fear eternal damnation if we fall from grace in these matters,but that we should continue to strive for improvement to be pleasing to God for better self control I think is the idea. The sacraments are designed to strengthen our resolve.Confession is not for condemnation but encouragement to improve in gaining control over not repression of our sexual urges and other sinful tendencies. It is not a good thing e.g.to say sex outside of marriage is ok.It isn't it raises all sort of issues and problems. Unwanted children for one and no child should be made to feel unwanted . Women like the woman who already had six children with out a husband and then ended up with eight more through artificial insemination without the means to support them.. We are not allowed to say this is a sin? Viz a mistake? e.g. It is also better to get something more wholesome to do than indulge in sexual fantasies.There is something repulsive about these things that most people feel quite naturally ,anyway. You say the Church demonises sex yet you are riling against just that a "demonic expression of sex "in child molestation considering the insidious on going harm to the person concerned, this could be called a demonic expression of sex could it not? It is also a result of sexual fantasy too long indulged in. The Church perhaps took a sterner stance against it in past centuries when in pagan times it was said they saw "sex' in every thing they laid eyes on. It now seems the wheel has gone full circle and Sex once again has raised it's problematic head.It's everywhere.Especially on the Internet. Also just because it is reported extensivley by the media does not mean that the majority of Catholic Priests in the Church are involved.Good Priests are being tarred with the same brush and this is very unjust.
SingleDonald | Feb 16, 2010, 07:47 PM EST
Temerity, I appreciate your concessions, but don't feel that we humans have "little will power and even less moral judgment". The Catholic Church has long demonized sex. Father James Kavanaugh, in his 1967 bombshell, "A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church" said, among other things, that the Church makes the "ideal" become the law. The ideal of virginity prior to marriage, celibacy in the priesthood, or even refraining from sexual fantasies, represent one view, espoused by the Church. Rational human beings, however, shouldn't fear "eternal damnation" for going against these principles. Also, if they believe they have done nothing wrong, why the need to go to confession, especially if they KNOW they will do these things again?!! The pedophile scandal, among priests should convince all that, if these clerical monsters performed these despicable acts, then we all should have no fear in having sex outside of marriage, and ESPECIALLY not for engaging in sexual fantasies!
Temerity | Feb 15, 2010, 05:40 PM EST
I have always believed that celibacy was a sanctified ideal state for a religious life ...and quite possible among the saintly but it seems rife with pitfalls for others with stung sex drives. In which case they should be allowed the natural outlet for it. Hopefully faithful marriage but maybe that will be the next discipline to go.Who knows where will it all end. Maybe let it all hang out?? Poor human beings they must not be frustrated at any cost.They all have little will power and even less moral judgement. Right?
SingleDonald | Feb 15, 2010, 10:08 AM EST
Sungold, You are right, in your assessment that pedophiles desire kids, not girlfriends or wives. What I meant was that, by allowing priests to date, then marry, a different type of man would be welcome into the priesthood. Presumably, this type of man would not have pedophile tendencies. BTW, here in America, a major scandal erupted in December, 1989. Father Bruce Ritter, founder of Covenant House, was accused of sexual involvement with young men he took off the streets. He resigned from Covenant House, 2/90, and died, 10/99. A book which came out in the 1990's, by an Irish American author, Charles M. Sennott, explained that Father Ritter committed statutory rape, but was not a pedophile. A pedophile, by definition, goes after girls or boys who are pre-puberty. Father Ritter went after teenage boys, and also adult males. His accuser, Kevin Kite, was 26, and passed himself off as 21, the maximum age Covenant House would accept young people from the streets. Kevin went to the authorities because of the following. He was a gay hustler, who wished to get out of that life. He went to Father Ritter for help, but instead, Father Ritter became one of his "johns"! The author gave a word for Father Ritter's interests: Ephebophile. It is an adult who goes after teenage boys or girls under the age of consent, but who are definitely past puberty.
Sungold | Feb 15, 2010, 05:38 AM EST
To SingleDonald: Allowing priests to marry will not stop pedophiles from stalking children. It's children they desire, not a wife.
caritas | Feb 14, 2010, 07:42 AM EST
A heart attack was too good for this pervert. Having suffered sexual abuse in Irish institutions I can understand where Helen is coming from. It takes courage to do what she has done! The religious black listed me here in Kilkenny when I went public about my sexual abuse in Ireland's institution.
Watereskhill | Feb 13, 2010, 09:51 PM EST
An Ogre whose dreadful dispostion (in this photo)let alone legacy has him well suited to his current companions midst the sulphur, coals, and pitch-forks.
SingleDonald | Feb 12, 2010, 08:17 PM EST
I think my problem is posting messages which are too long! So again, I'll be more concise. The Church, like other power structures, likes to keep its flock under their control. I have written numerous times of its position on human sexuality. To say that something is a "mortal sin" is to scare people into submission. Notice how the confessional lines are shorter than they were, a while ago? That is because people don't believe that fantasizing over Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt, looking at Playboy/Playgirl, or even pre-marital sex amount to "damnable offenses", anymore! I appreciate pksmit123 accepting my position of an abused person hitting a cleric, if all else fails. I was taught, in Catholic Grade School, that this would not incur ex-communication, as joining the Communist Party would. I never heard of a "reserved sin" before. Another thing common to power structures is to protect their own. I could actually see this, up to a point. When child abuse is involved though, that notion/practice should go out the window! Again I say: LET PRIESTS HAVE GIRLFRIENDS, THEN WIVES! You would then see a different type of man joining the vocation!
pksmit123 | Feb 12, 2010, 02:43 PM EST
The Catholic Church used to (maybe still does) have a sin called a reserved sin. Striking a priest is a reserved sin. That means only the Vatican can give dispensation. That's right, not all sin's are forgiven in the confessional. But ironically a priest could rape a child (a non-reserved sin) and go to confession and have his brother priest or bishop absolve him and off he goes to rape and rape again. Now both men are culpable. The bishops and Magisterium (Vatican) are culpable too. Do we see a problem here? Because if I find out some priest is raping my kid, I'm going to beat the devil right out of him. My own exorcism so to speak, He won't do it again. I'll take my chances and take it up with the Lord when I get there. For now will have to let the legal system beat the devil out of the church. They deserve it.
Intercessor | Feb 12, 2010, 02:40 PM EST
In the USA, the above picture of Father Smyth probably would have won a Pulitzer Prize, the most coveted prize in photo-journalism! The picture seems to shriek, "Epitome of Evil!" Who in their right man would trust a man such as this to be alone with a child? Where is the Gift of Discernment? Surely, it must not have been active in all of the parishes where this Judas-Priest was allowed to consecrate the Eucharist or in the Headquarters of the Archdioceses, where letters of Father Smyth's molestations and rapes were sent.
marfran | Feb 11, 2010, 10:36 PM EST
I think that Father Smyth and all other priests that have made mockery of their vows of celibacy will suffer in the place that those men go to after death, which will likely be in the lower regions of hell!
hartfordwoman | Feb 11, 2010, 06:06 PM EST
This is horrifying. The monster's picture does him justice.
SingleDonald | Feb 11, 2010, 04:24 PM EST
I'm sorry that the editors of Irish Voices apparently felt that my comments on this subject were too inflammatory. Let me be more concise. A)All Catholics should take with a grain of salt the dogmatic teachings some of us learned as kids, in grammar & high school, concerning human sexuality. Sexual thoughts will not send us to hell! If any kid is subject to abuse(which I was not), he/she should feel justified in physical retaliation, to the best of his/her ability, against the priest, brother, or sister perpetrating this abuse. A warning could first be given that the clergyman/woman is committing the sin. If that doesn't work, then a boy punching a priest or brother, or a girl smacking a sister may be just what the abuser needs to curtail his/her evil ways!
Carroll09 | Feb 11, 2010, 06:43 AM EST
JohnB4sanity,I think it is difficult to predict what effect the Pope's letter will have,but unfortunately I think whatever he writes he won't please everyone.There's nothing new in that I suppose,but writing to the people of Ireland was something he had to do,so we'll just have to take it as it comes.It is reported that the Pope is about to sign off on a new document which will combat the problem of abuse in the Church & severely punish those guilty of abuse.There was also a report in Ireland,though it was good news so it didn't make the headlines,that most of the dioceses are now in fact MORE than compliant with child protection procedures.In fact one diocese,which was notorious for abuse,Ferns,is now being held up as a model on child protection both for the Church and secular organisations.No amount of money will erase the suffering of victims,but the question that they and everyone else wants to have answered is "can we stop this happening again".I think we are finally on the way to being able to answer this in the affirmative.
JohnB4sanity | Feb 10, 2010, 10:57 PM EST
The conversation around the world has changed. some examples are in previous and below ...... Otherwise America will be seen as a rogue nation of religious abusers with a whole segment of the population determined to erase from the memory of the population the sexual abuses, murder, genocide, exploitation and bullying of humanity. "I do not want to be a war correspondent" said Ms *******. "That is the fate that history dictates on each and every occasion the church has reached a point of control in a country there has been bloodshed." If the world considered that the climate was a greater issue and that the finances that are in trouble after centuries of cover up of criminal activities right across the country by Catholics and their clergy was not an issue then I figure I should go back to NASA or take up a role in a movie as a little old lady so that I get to enjoy the year or two we have left before the radical Christians decide that it is necessary to start killing those that speak out as it is no longer possible for them to ignore the evidence and the voices of the millions of abused at the hands of the Catholic and other churches and religions. ..... It has been mooted in Ireland that the church should cash in its entire assets including the Vatican and return it all through the victims. The church if it is really any good will rise up from the ashes and rebuild itself as only a real religion can. Otherwise the Catholic church will simply be another failed religion that could not cope with progress, science, evolution, sex and anything that it teaches becomes suspect as these can have only have been used to keep secret and quiet the sexual and other abuses of women and children and the vulnerable simply for the sake of their ability to exploit them. The move is up to the church to do in response to the horrors in Ireland and most believe that the Pope will fail with his letter to Ireland What then?
Carroll09 | Feb 10, 2010, 07:00 PM EST
John,the Catholic Church's teaching has not changed in 2000 years and its teaching on homosexuality is freely available in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,if you want to find out what the Church REALLY teaches.It teaches that,like everyone else,such persons are to be treated with dignity & respect-a teaching of love the sinner,hate the sin,which is infinitely more compassionate than one would find in many other denominations.Also the Catholic Church is no more a worldwide ring of paedophiles than the education system,the medical system,the world of sport,other Christian denominations-the point is that paedophiles are DECEPTIVE and will seek out situations where they can be alone with & abuse children,Catholic Church or no Catholic Church.
KathyCallahan | Feb 10, 2010, 05:54 PM EST
All I could do while reading the story is weep for the McConigle sisters, brother, grandmother and the entire family! Smyth had the routine down all right! There are countless stories out there of priests using their position and influence to prey on family members...They insinuate their way into the the fabric of their lives. I got the chills reading about how Smyth gained entry to the family by playing their poor innocent grandmother who probably didn't suffers fools gladly in any other area of her life.
johnozed | Feb 10, 2010, 05:09 PM EST
Ever notice that The Pope demonizes LGBT people as the boogie man when pedophilia scandals reach the surface? The RC Church is a world wide ring of pedophiles and enablers. Sinead O'Connor was right- FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY.