April 2014

‘High-risk’ pervert Scully back on streets

ONE OF Ireland’s most depraved perverts – who abused more than 20 children between the ages of just two and eight – is back on the streets, even though a detective says he is a “high risk” of re-offending.

Kevin Scully’s depraved sex acts imposed a reign of terror among local children in his native west Cork during the mid 1990s.

On one occasion two terrified girls locked themselves into the boot of a relative’s car to avoid his perverted attentions, and he once attacked five children in a single day.

Children told investigating gardaí how he used scissors to cut their pocket linings so he could touch their private parts.

He has spent most of the last 13 years in custody in Arbour Hill jail or in the Central Mental Hospital for his shocking crimes.

Although the equivalent of €330,000 was spent on treatment for Scully as a teenager, psychiatrists believe it had no effect.

Scully was released from prison last year after completing his jail sentence, which had been backdated to 2003.

He has since been living between various hostels for homeless men in Dublin’s inner city. Scully was forced to leave one hostel after his criminal record became known.

Ordered by the trial judge to stay away from west Cork for 10 years after his release, he is also to remain on the sex-offenders’ list until he is 55-years-old

Such was the outrage at his actions that during his 2009 trial fears were expressed for his safety if he returned to Cork.

Medical and probation reports given to the court showed that Scully had avoided and minimised the effects of his actions on his victims.

One doctor wrote that therapies designed to help Scully understand how his victims were affected “bore no fruit”.

Scully pleaded guilty to a total of 16 sample counts of sexually assaulting 10 girls and five boys between April 1997 and April 2000.

The children were all aged between just two and eight.

Some of the victims were assaulted just once and others sexually abused several times.

A garda investigation was launched in 2000 after a three-year-old girl told her mother that Scully interfered with her.

Gardai arrested Scully in 2000 and he admitted sexually assaulting the little girl and eight others aged between two and eight years.

After a second arrest on May 23, 2000, he admitted sexually assaulting six more girls and seven boys.

The abuse took place in a variety of locations across west Cork – including houses, cars and other buildings.

In some cases, Scully threatened the children that he would kill them if they told their parents, according to evidence given in court at the time by Detective Garda Bart O’Leary.

Scully was first charged with the offences in the summer of July 2000 when a district court judge ordered a psychiatric assessment.

The Southern Health Board later found a place for the teenager in a residential treatment centre at Glebe House in Cambridgeshire in the UK.

He spent over two years there at a cost of some IR£280,000, but it was decided that he did not benefit from the treatment he received.

He came back to Ireland and was returned for trial in November 2002, but a jury deemed him unfit to plead and he was detained at the Central Mental Hospital.

A change in the law allowed the Director of Public Prosecutions to re-activate the case and he was brought to court, where he pleaded guilty in March 2008.

Detective O’Leary said that while Scully had co-operated with them, the reports from doctors suggested that he was at the high risk level of risk as regards re-offending.

At the sentencing hearing in March, 2009, Judge Patrick Moran said that he was concerned about the high risk of Scully and he wanted to include an element of supervision upon release.

He added that the offences were at the higher end of the scale of sexual abuse as he jailed Scully for 20 years with seven suspended backdated to 2003.

March 2009

26-year-old jailed for child abuse

A 26-year-old man who sexually abused at least 15 children, some of them as young as two, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail at the Circuit Criminal Court in Cork.

Seven years of the sentence are to be suspended.

The court was told that Kevin Scully from Drimoleague in west Cork threatened some of the children that he would kill them if they told their parents about the abuse.

He was just 15 years old when he began abusing the first of his victims in April 1997. They were young boys and girls aged between two and eight and the abuse took place at various locations in west Cork.

Scully pleaded guilty to 16 sample counts of sexually assaulting 15 girls and boys. But the court was told he had admitted abusing a number of other children too.

After he was charged, Scully spent almost three years at a residential treatment centre in England, which was paid for by the Southern Health Board and cost more than €350,000.

Detective Garda Bart O’Leary said staff at the centre told him the treatment had been of no benefit to Scully and the risk of him re-offending was high.

Judge Patrick Moran sentenced Scully to four years in jail on each of five counts on the indictment, with these sentences to run consecutively.

He suspended seven years of the sentence but said Scully would have to abide by the directions of the Probation Service for 10 years after his release and his name will remain on the sex offenders’ register for almost 30 years, until he is 55.