“I remember I was on the laptop and I went on to Waterford Vikings Basketball Club website, and it said, ‘We are primarily a young male basketball club’ and I clicked on the contact link and Bill Kenneally’s name came up – my heart just sank to think he was still involved with young people.”Jason Clancy is recalling the moment in 2012 that he discovered that Kenneally, the man who abused him, and more than 20 other pubescent boys in Waterford in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, was still involved in underage basketball in the city and still had access to teenage boys.This week, Clancy together with fellow survivors, Colin Power, Kevin Keating, Barry Murphy, Paul Walsh, Simon O’Toole and Gerard Mullane, and others who chose to remain anonymous, sat in the public gallery of Dáil Éireann to hear Taoiseach Michéal Martin apologise for how the State had failed them.The apology came on foot of the South East Commission of Investigation into the response of various state agencies to allegations and reports in the 1980s that Kenneally, a member of a powerful Fianna Fáil dynasty in Waterford, was abusing boys in the city.Commission chairman Judge Michael White was highly critical of the failure by then acting Garda chief superintendent Sean Cashman, now in his 90s, and then acting superintendent, Insp PJ Hayes, deceased, to properly investigate Kenneally after receiving a report in December 1987 that he had abused a boy.The boy’s father did not make an official complaint about Kenneally and although Cashman and Hayes interviewed Kenneally on December 30th 1987 when he admitted the abuse, they did not pursue the matter as they felt they could not do so without a formal complaint.Cashman instead contacted Kenneally’s uncle Billy Kenneally snr, a former TD, and, acting on Cashman’s recommendation, Kenneally was referred to a psychiatrist through another uncle of his, Msgr John Shine, a leading clergyman in Waterford.[ Miriam Lord: Low turnout for State apology to Bill Kenneally’s victims reflects poorly on our politiciansOpens in new window ]Judge White observed: “The failure of acting Chief Supt Cashman and, to a lesser extent, Supt PJ Hayes after December 26th 1987 to conduct a proper investigation into the activities of Bill Kenneally was a clear and serious dereliction of duty even by 1987 standards.”White’s report was a vindication of Clancy and his fellow survivors. For Clancy, sitting in the public gallery of the Dáil with his wife, Deirdre and children, Ciara (24), Aoife (22), Jamie (20) and Nathan (14) and hearing the Taoiseach apologise, it was nonetheless a hugely emotional moment.Jason Clancy and his wife Deirdre: 'I didn’t realise he was still involved in sports.' Photograph: Patrick Browne The past 14 years have been a tough journey for him, ever since he discovered his abuser was still involved in underage basketball with access to children and he decided to go into Waterford Garda station, on December 12th 2012, and report Kenneally for abusing him almost 30 years earlier.“Over the years, I had pulled up outside in Ballybricken, across the road from the Garda station in the car park and sat there – I must have done it three or four times at least over the years and I just kind of said to myself, ‘Not today,’ and I drove off.“I didn’t realise he was still involved in sports or anything, like – I thought he was just a kind of a dirty old man living at home with his mammy and daddy. But when his name and address and contact number popped up on the screen as the contact for Vikings, I knew I didn’t have a choice.”Clancy reported the abuse to gardaí – how Kenneally started to abuse him just a few weeks after his 14th birthday when, in retaliation for a Halloween prank played on Kenneally, he was invited to the house where Kenneally made him strip naked, wear white shorts, and he was handcuffed and abused.“When the sexual abuse was finished, he squeezed my testicles to make me smile and photographed me with his Polaroid camera, which printed the photograph immediately – I remember how he waved the photo in my face, telling me if I told anyone, he had the pictures to show I enjoyed it.”The abuse went on twice weekly for three-and-a-half years – from November 1984 to June 1988 – with Kenneally abusing Clancy in his house as well as on trips to various parts of Co Waterford, as he did with the other boys he abused and blackmailed into silence by taking their photos.Paedophile Bill Kenneally (centre), a member of a powerful Fianna Fáil dynasty in Waterford, was 10 years into an 18-year jail term when he died in prison last month. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times Clancy gave gardaí the names of seven boys he knew had been abused by Kenneally but, unhappy with the slow pace of the investigation, he contacted The Irish Times and, on April 23rd, 2013, the paper carried a report of complaints by Clancy and another victim who chose to remain anonymous.But the story took a dramatic turn within days of The Irish Times report when RTÉ’s Damien Tiernan interviewed Kenneally at his home and he confirmed he had been quizzed by gardaí in 1987 about alleged abuse but never charged and was instead advised to get counselling for himself.Clancy said: “I heard the news first on radio and when I saw the interview that evening on the RTÉ News, that the gardaí went to Kenneally in 1987, obviously on foot of a report, and simply told him to go and get counselling. It was devastating just hearing that.”Equally difficult for Clancy was learning that in 1985, a 14-year-old boy walked into Waterford Garda station to report that he had been abused by Kenneally, only to be told he was too young to make a statement. If gardaí had followed up then, Clancy would have spared much of his abuse.The Garda investigation continued and on March 18th, 2015 Kenneally was charged by Det Garda Maureen Neary and Det Sgt Siobhan Keating with 75 counts of abuse of Clancy and nine other boys, aged between 13 and 16, between January 1984 and December 1987, and when the cases came to trial at Waterford Circuit Criminal Court, he pleaded guilty to 10 sample counts.On February 19th, 2016, Judge Eugene O’Kelly imposed a sentence of 14 years and two months for what he described as Kenneally’s predatory behaviour in grooming the boys – a sentence upheld by the Court of Appeal on February 22nd, 2018 after Kenneally appealed its severity.Jason Clancy, Colin Power, Paul Walsh, Gerry Mullane, Kevin Keating and Barry Murphy outside Leinster House this week when the Government offered a formal State apology to the survivors of Bill Kenneally's sexual abuse. Photograph: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos That case in Waterford was the first of two court cases for Kenneally, as he was later charged with 266 counts of indecently and sexually assaulting five boys between 1973 and 1993; on April 25th, 2023, six days into a trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, he pleaded guilty to 13 sample counts.[ Who was Bill Kenneally? The basketball coach whose crimes had ‘lifelong impact on victims’Opens in new window ]On May 22nd, 2023, Judge Martin Nolan imposed a four-and-a-half year term for these offences to run consecutive to the term imposed in Waterford. Kenneally (75) was some 10 years into the cumulative 18-year sentence when he died in the Midlands Prison last month.By the time Kenneally was charged with the second group of offences, Clancy and his fellow survivors had begun lobbying politicians to establish a commission of investigation into who knew about Kenneally’s abuse in the 1980s and why they failed to act on it.They enlisted Phoenix Law in Belfast and Clancy prepared a 70-page dossier on Kenneally’s abuse as they made their case to various politicians including then Wexford Labour TD Brendan Howlin and various ministers for justice, including Frances Fitzgerald, Heather Humphreys and Charlie Flanagan.Fitzgerald gave the go-ahead but it was Flanagan who announced the commission in May 2018, appointing retired Circuit Court judge Barry Hickson to chair the investigation. After two years, Hickson had stood down for personal reasons and retired High Court judge Michael White took over.Both the abuse and the campaign to hold gardaí and other agencies to account took a huge toll on Clancy – as did a headline in a tabloid newspaper which erroneously named him, rather than Kenneally, as a paedophile, resulting in him being targeted for online abuse by a UK paedophile vigilante group.Jason Clancy and his wife Deirdre: 'I didn’t seek any help and it sort of faded into the background as I got on with my life.' Photograph: Patrick Browne “The abuse by Kenneally lasted three-and-a-half years – it stopped and I didn’t seek any help and it sort of faded into the background as I got on with my life. But the last 14 years, the criminal process and lobbying for the commission were certainly harder for me and for my family.”[ Bill Kenneally’s death ‘a strange release’, abuse survivor saysOpens in new window ]The owner of a successful legal services company, Clancy initially took time off work but the stress of the abuse and striving to get justice had an affect, as did sitting in on the Commission of Investigation hearings and listening to his abuse being discussed before Kenneally himself came to testify.“Judge White and the Commission were very empathetic, but it was totally surreal sitting in and hearing your name being mentioned and how you were abused sexually ... Your abuse is very personal – it was just cringy. And then Kenneally himself came and testified, and that was very difficult.“He was far from remorseful, and ... at one point when he was asked about ruining our lives, he said: ‘If they were ruined, I don’t know why they took 30 years to come forward.” And then, when he said I had initiated the sex with him, I was devasted. I just got up and left. I couldn’t listen to him.”Clancy missed the concluding days of the commission hearings as he checked himself into St Patrick’s hospital in Dublin where, over the course of 18 months from September 2024, he spent eight months during three separate stays. It helped him, he says, to get to a better place.“It all just proved too much. I was never intent on self-harm because I would never do that to Deirdre and the kids, but I just wanted to retreat from the world – like those fellows you hear who go off the grid and build a cabin up a mountain. I just wanted to be away from the whole world.[ ‘We all struggled’: Bill Kenneally abuse survivor calls for speedier commissions of investigationOpens in new window ]“I remember one day thinking about the irony of it all – how I used to have to meet Kenneally outside St Otteran’s psychiatric hospital in Waterford; I used to wait outside the walls of one psychiatric hospital for him, and here I was in another psychiatric hospital because I was abused by him.”With the State apology proffered, yet another chapter in the sordid tale of Kenneally and the damage he did to so many lives is about to close for Clancy and his fellow survivors. But if he knew then what he knows now about the journey ahead, would he still have reported Kenneally to gardaí?“My daughter Ciara asked me that last week and it’s a hard question to answer, but she said to me that if I had just closed down the laptop after clicking on the Viking Basketball website and if she and Aoife and Jamie and Nathan found out about that, they would be so ashamed of me.“But she said I did the right thing and that they are so proud of me for doing it. I know myself that if I had closed down the laptop, I would never have been able to look at myself in the mirror again and I would have ended up in St Pat’s – but it would have been because the guilt would have just eaten me away.”