US legal firm hires private detective to track down defrocked Limerick priest
THE SEARCH is again on to find a Limerick priest who was deported to Ireland 10 years ago after being jailed for abusing two boys.
The American law firm Manly, McGuire and Stewart, want to serve defrocked priest Oliver O'Grady with papers for a civil action on behalf of alleged victims.
In their quest to find the 65 year-old from Limerick city the firm hired a private detective to track him down.
Patrick Wall, Manly, McGuire and Stewart, arrived in Dublin last week, in a bid to serve O'Grady with new lawsuits of alleged child abuse in a Californian diocese.
In recent years he has been reported to be living in Limerick, Dublin and also Holland, and is now believed to be residing in a hostel in Dublin city centre.
The firm are trying to serve O'Grady with civil lawsuits, relating to the alleged abuse of three young boys and two young girls, from two different families, in the Californian diocese of Stockton.
O'Grady returned to live in the Mid-West in 2001, after being deported from the United States, where he was convicted on four counts of lewd and lascivious acts on two males.
He served half of a 14-year prison sentence, but in depositions he admitted to the rape, molestation and abuse of over 20 children from 1973 onwards.
The former priest is not listed on the Irish sex offenders' register as it only came into existence under the Sex Offenders Act 2001, and the register does not apply retrospectively. Mr Wall said he believes the gardai are in contact with O'Grady, however they have no obligation to pass on his whereabouts to the legal firm.
This summer O'Grady was due to receive a pension worth $100,000, or $800 a month upon reaching his retirement age.
Mr Wall, a former Roman Catholic Priest and Benedictine monk, has consulted on more than 200 cases of clerical abuse in the United States.
He has been pursuing the alleged child abuser for over a year and has urged he should be placed in a "locked-down psychiatric facility, where he won't pose a danger to children" and described him as "the Hannibal Lector of the clerical world."
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