Gay Byrne, Annie Murphy AND Bishop Brendan Comiskey

RTE Archives and THAT Interview with Annie Murphy 2 April 1993:

According to an article in RTE Archives regarding episode of the Late Late Show broadcast on 2 April 1993.
Revelations About Eamonn Casey 1993

In 1993 Annie Murphy, mother of Peter who was fathered by Eamonn Casey, spoke to Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show about her affair with the then Bishop of Kerry.

In 1992 it was revealed that Bishop Eamonn Casey had fathered a child with an American woman Annie Murphy. The child named Peter was born in 1973 when Casey was Bishop of Kerry. Bishop Eamonn Casey resigned [as Bishop of Galway] as a result of the revelations. The following year in 1993, Annie Murphy published a book ‘Forbidden Fruit: The True Story of My Secret Love for the Bishop of Galway’, and made an appearance on the Late Late Show.

In this excerpt from the interview Gay Byrne remarks that
"If your son is half as good a man as his father, he won’t be doing too badly."
Annie Murphy responds by stating
"I’m not so bad either."
Annie Murphy promptly thanked Gay Byrne for the interview and left the set.

There was a furious reaction from Irish "liberals" to this exchange that occurred at the end of the interview. It was claimed Gay had insulted Annie Murphy in the course of defending his friend Bishop Casey. In fact the negative reaction continued for decades and this exchange was still being quoted in the mass media and social media as a black mark against Gay up to the time of his recent death  (4 November 2019). I think it gave Gay Byrne a nasty shock. He used to say that he was not pushing any political party or ideology and this is likely true BUT he certainly liked to be popular - especially in the eyes of "progressives". I suspect that this is the reason why Gay decided that the next time, a Bishop was being denounced in the media, he would take the side of the witch-hunters. Thus he betrayed his friend Bishop Brendan Comiskey in 1995. See article "Bishop Brendan Comiskey and False Allegations of Child Abuse" This is an extract:

Bishop Comiskey
Take the following from a sneering article by Declan Lynch in the Sunday Independent on 8 October 1995. It is headed "Gaybo Speaks and the Catholic Faithful Tremble":

"I personally would rate myself a friend and admirer of Brendan Comiskey [said Gay Byrne on his radio programme], and indeed I was looking for him on the telephone recently, and he didn't make contact with me which would have been kind of unusual, a little bit unusual.

"So much so that I don't believe now that Brendan Comiskey has gone to America because of stress, nor do I believe he's gone because of alcohol, nor do I believe he's gone because of his alleged protection of a priest who's up on charges.

"I think there is something other. I haven't the faintest idea of what it is, but I think there is something else, and I think it is something dreadful, and I.m almost afraid of what it might be. That's my personal reaction."

A second article in the same paper commented that "although the remarks appeared to be 'off the cuff' it is known that Gay scripts his shows with extreme care and attention."

So what was Gay Byrne suggesting? When Father Sean Fortune committed suicide he left a note claiming that he had been sexually assaulted by Bishop Comiskey! Is that what Gay had in mind?  ENDOFQUOTE

I rather think that paedophilia was what Gay was implying! But he was never questioned by our liberal journalists who - like Declan Lynch - didn't actually believe the libel but were pleased that it was published!

Gay never apologised publicly for his vile suggestion but may have done so privately to Bishop Comiskey. An article in the Irish Catholic  (7 November 2019) by Mary Kenny is entitled Gay retained the Catholicism  his Mother Brought to Him and it's possible he made his private peace with God and the Bishop. If so it wasn't enough, but liberal Ireland was not going to bring him to book over this issue. They were content to denounce him over his supposed mistreatment of Annie Murphy!

Rory Connor
5 December 2019

Background: The story of Eamonn Casey and Annie Murphy

Annie Murphy arrived in Ireland to stay with Eamonn Casey  in April 1973. She was 25, and recovering from the traumatic breakup of a two-year marriage.

Her mother was Eamonn Casey's cousin; her father, John Murphy, and Casey had become friends. Casey had offered to put Annie Murphy up at his residence in Inch, Kerry, while she got over her recent traumas.

Casey was four years into his tenure as bishop of Kerry, a dynamic and colourful figure who combined a gregarious personality and habit of fast driving with an impressive track record in social advocacy and fundraising. His appointment as bishop in 1969 – at the age of 42 – was a recognition of his great success agitating and organising against homelessness in Britain, most notably as founding chairman of the housing charity Shelter. He didn't have the academic theological pedigree normally associated with Irish bishops, but neither was he in any way radical on doctrinal issues.

Soon after Annie Murphy arrived, she and Eamonn Casey began a relationship. By November 1973, she was pregnant. Casey pressed her to have the child adopted. She gave birth to Peter Eamonn at the Rotunda on 31 July 1974. Casey visited the mother and child in hospital, and they argued about her refusal to put the child up for adoption. She refused to go back to Inch, instead electing to stay in a Daughters of Charity home for single mothers, St Joseph's, Dublin. Casey visited, and they argued again. She was deeply unhappy, had medical complications after her pregnancy, and also became paranoid about Casey's intentions. Shortly afterwards, Annie Murphy left, with her baby, Peter, to go home to Connecticut.

Annie Murphy: The Question of Cash - and Libel

In an article in the Irish Independent on 3 August 2013, Nicola Anderson wrote
Annie Murphy: 'I regret he had to leave the church'
TRACKED down by the Irish Independent last year, Annie Murphy is currently living with her partner, artist Thaddeus Heinchon, in a trailer park in a town east of Los Angeles in California.

She admitted then that she has since regretted her devastating exposure of Eamon Casey, saying: "I took justice into my own hands and I regret that because two wrongs don't make a right." And she also regretted that he had to leave the Catholic Church after details that he had fathered a son emerged, saying: "The Catholic Church was Eamon's cornerstone and that was taken away from him."

Although she is thought to have made close to €300,000 from the publication of her book revealing details of the affair, Ms Murphy said: "When you get money like that, it makes you feel dirty, you want to get rid of it." She said she had given a lot of it to her son and some to her then partner, Arthur Pennell, – who had pressurised her to go public with her story – and said she had kept less than half of it herself, adding: "I didn't do anything useful with it, I didn't buy a home with it or anything."

That wasn't the only money Annie Murphy had received from Bishop Casey. According to an article in Magill Magazine Eamon Casey: Opening the floodgates of scandal  (Colin Murphy, 25 January 2006):

In March 1975, Annie Murphy's father, John Murphy, came back to Dublin to meet Casey. They agreed that Casey would send Annie Murphy $175 per month in maintenance, increasing over time to $300 per month. ...... In 1990, Annie Murphy and her partner, Arthur Penell, were in financial difficulties themselves, and they and Casey began to negotiate a settlement. In July 1990, Casey paid them a cheque of £70,669.20 ($117,000), plus a further $8,000 (a total of $125,000).

Murphy and Pennell then sought further monies to pay for Peter's college education. Annie Murphy was also concerned that Casey acknowledge his son. She decided to go public, and in January 1992, contacted the Irish Times. The newspaper gradually confirmed various aspects of the story, but didn't publish it. Murphy and Pennell meanwhile continued in negotiations with Casey, through his intermediary, an Irish priest in Brooklyn, Jim Kelly. These negotiations arrived at a figure of $150,000 to be paid by Casey for Peter's education, but weren't finalised.

On Thursday 1 May 1992, Phoenix magazine ran a short story on an unnamed leading cleric about to be involved in a scandal. This Irish Times still didn't publish, but the story was by then an open secret amongst the media.........

Casey Affair Book Publishers Settle Libel Action with £100,000 Payout
An article by Stephen O'Brien in the Irish Independent on 30 November 1998 confirmed that a major libel action linked to the book by Annie Murphy, was settled out of court for a sum reported to be in the region of £100,000. The Irish Independent confirmed that a settlement was agreed by publishers Little Brown, the company which brought out Forbidden Fruit written by Annie Murphy and Peter de Rosa.

The case was settled without any retraction or apology, or any question of the book being withdrawn from sale. The News of the World quoted people close to Dympna Kilbane  saying she was "overjoyed'' at the outcome. ``She has gone through a lot in order to clear her name and has emerged victorious,'' the source said.

An article in The Herald (Scotland)  on 13 April 1993 "Woman Steps into Bishop Tape Row" gives some background information. Dympna Kilbane said she shared a flat with Annie Murphy, when Ms Murphy was pregnant in 1974 as the result of her affair with the bishop. Ms Kilbane confirmed she was taking legal action against Ms Murphy for references made about her in the book, Forbidden Fruit.  She said she had provided the Sunday Independent with a tape recording of a conversation he had with Bishop Casey in which he called Annie Murphy ''an evil woman''.

As per an article in the National Catholic Reporter on 30 April 1993:  "Kilbane has also raised questions about the paternity of Peter Murphy, the son Annie Murphy claims was fathered by Casey."

Society's Attitude to "Kiss and Tell"

In point of fact, Annie Murphy got off pretty lightly during the 1993 Late Late Show interview with Gay Byrne. (It also emerged during the interview that she was hoping for a film deal - or TV mini-series - based on her book.) In general the women - and occasionally men - who try to make money out of sharing their sexual activities with the public are regarded with contempt by society - sometimes amused contempt. By its nature "Kiss and Tell" involves a comparative nonentity trying to exploit his/her sexual relationship with a much more important personality. Even when the public are titillated, this doesn't do anything to create respect for the person who is betraying confidences. TWO EXAMPLES

(1) When Terry Keane died in June 2008, RTE described her as "well known columnist and fashion journalist" and "principal contributor of The Sunday Independent's long-running gossip column The Keane Edge". It was also mentioned that she studied medicine at Trinity College but dropped out without taking a degree and that she had married a young barrister Ronan Keane but separated from him, after which he went on to become Chief Justice. A slightly more substantial figure than Annie Murphy then but she is chiefly "well known" for being the long time mistress of Taoiseach (Irish PM) Charlie Haughey and for announcing this during an interview on the Late Late Show in May 1999! This was some years after Haughey had been forced to resign as Taoiseach and during a period when he was under intense pressure from the McCracken and Moriarty Tribunals regarding his irregular financial affairs. Keane also gave the story of their affair as an exclusive to rival newspaper The Sunday Times, although she was still employed by Independent News and Media, and abruptly left the Sunday Independent.

Terry Keane was subjected to considerable criticism in the media- far more so than Annie Murphy. According to the RTE obituary: In later years, in an RTÉ documentary, Terry Keane said she regretted the pain that she had caused by speaking about her 27-year-long affair. 
Given her cynical betrayal of Haughey (they never spoke again before his death in June 2006), it is likely that the main pain she regretted, was that suffered by herself!

(2) Captain James Hewitt  a former British cavalry officer, who came to prominence in the mid 1990s when he disclosed he had a love affair with Princess Diana from 1986 to 1991 at a time when she was still married to Prince Charles. He was a major source for the book Princess in Love by Anna Pasternak published in 1994. His Wikipedia article has a very interesting link (unfortunately broken) to an article in the new York Times on 5 October 1994 entitled "'Kiss and Tell' Officer Draws Heaps of Scorn". However this proved to be only the opening installment of the ridicule and opprobrium heaped on Hewitt. 

Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in August 1997 and In 2003, Hewitt tried to sell his 64 personal letters from Diana for £10 million. The act of selling the letters was considered to be a betrayal of trust, and Sarah, Duchess of York, condemned his action. She was reported to have said, "Betrayal, I think, is the most horrible, horrible, disloyal thing you can do to anyone".

Wikipedia mentions that in In 1991, Hewitt served as a Challenger tank commander in the Gulf War and was mentioned in dispatches.  However he failed the exam for promotion to major three times. Again he is a more substantial figure than Annie Murphy whose sole lifetime achievement seems to have been as a Kiss and Tell artiste!

Compared to the others, Annie Murphy got off very lightly indeed. Hewitt was furiously denounced for an action that could not have harmed a deceased person. Terry Keane betrayed Haughey after he had been forced out of politics and was under pressure because of his irregular financial dealings. She added to his troubles but didn't create them. Annie Murphy was solely responsible for forcing Bishop Casey to resign. Gay Byrne and his audience treated her respectfully during that infamous Late Late Show interview. It is not insulting to point out that there are discrepancies in the story being told by a Kiss and Tell artiste!