November 2010 Priest gets suspended sentence for sexual offences with teenager A teenage boy who went to confession, had his clothes removed and his genitals touched by a priest today saw the culprit being given an 18-month suspended sentence. Brendan Wrixon, aged 74, was a priest in North Cork at the time and was acting as confessor Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin during a religious workshop organised in Mallow by the diocese of Cloyne. The judge said to Wrixon: “You violated not only the laws of the country but your own religious view and whatever tenets you believed in. I hope that the exposure of the offence and all the evidence will be a vindication of the victim. “You have acknowledged publically that you wronged him, you are no longer a priest and rightly so, you don’t deserve to be one.” The judge took into consideration the defendant’s age, his full co-operation with the investigation, the treatment he began to take more than five years ago when the complaint was first made and reports from experts that he is at low risk of re-offending and is now living alone with his life ruined. In reference to the media coverage of the case, defence senior counsel, Tim O’Leary, said Wrixon was facing “a fire-storm”.  Mr O’Leary said that the defendant had admitted to sexual incidents between himself and the victim other than that about which the complaint was made. Wrixon was sentenced on the charge to which he pleaded guilty – committing an offence of gross indecency with a male person on a date between October 1982 and February 1983. Detective Garda Coleman Murphy said that then Fr Wrixon was hearing the teenager’s confession and he removed the boy’s clothes, touched his genitals and kissed him on the lips. When Fr Wrixon was questioned about the allegation he told the detective that there had been mutual masturbation between himself and the complainant on six or seven occasions. One incident occurred in the sacristy of a church, another on a lonely road near the teenager’s house.  “The victim alleges about 20 incidents of a sexual nature, some of them involved having to perform oral sex on Fr Brendan Wrixon,” Det. Garda Murphy said. Tim O’Leary SC said Wrixon was no longer a priest. He said the defendant apologised completely to the young man.