A former Irish priest exposed as a pedophile has been divorced by his wife in Scotland, according to the Sunday Independent.

Bill Carney, named as a serial child abuser in the Murphy report into clerical abuse in the Dublin diocese, divorced late last year.

He is now living in Staffordshire in England after selling the bed-and-breakfast business he shared with his former wife in Scotland.

According to the Independent, Carney is moving between rented rooms after the sale of the Scottish business in the golfing Mecca of St Andrews, believed to have been sold for less than the £600,000 guide price.

Carney, forced out of the priesthood in the 1990s, faces a host of civil actions at home in Ireland after he was accused of abusing up to 32 children in the Murphy report.

Gardai investigating the complaints against Carney have been in contact with authorities in England and Scotland but have yet to question the former priest.

Former son-in-law Paul Clayton spoke to the Sunday Independent this weekend, five months after his mother divorced Carney.

“He is telling people that he has done nothing wrong,” Clayton told the paper.

“And people believe him because, he says, if he had done something wrong, the authorities would have done something about it by now.

“He has told me that he has made himself available for questioning and nobody is interested.”

Carney did plead guilty to indecently assaulting two altar boys in 1983 and was then moved from parish to parish in Dublin for almost 10 years before finally quitting the priesthood with a £30,000 pay-out from the Catholic Church.

Six of his victims were paid damages by the Church after the publication of the Murphy report.