Former Kilkenny hurling star DJ Carey has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison
Joe Brolly has labelled DJ Carey ‘a lost soul’ and ‘a pariah now until the day that he dies’, following the former hurling star’s sentencing to five-and-a-half years in prison.
The 54-year-old ex-Kilkenny hurler pleaded guilty in July to 10 counts of persuading family, friends and fans to hand over nearly €400,000, claiming he needed cancer treatment in the US. An additional eight counts were taken into account during his sentencing at the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin on Monday.
Brolly discussed the sentence given to the five-time All-Ireland winner, who also bagged nine All-Star awards, on his Free State Podcast this week.
“He’s a lost soul,” Brolly stated. “I hope I’m not a sanctimonious person or self righteous person. What he did was outrageous and it involved adopting a life of lies and deliberately exploiting people using those lies.
“I understand all of that and he has received a very heavy punishment. But for me, he’s a lost soul..”, reports the Irish Mirror.
“Here he is this evening in a prison cell, a pariah now until the day that he dies, utterly isolated. You will say ‘he is paying for his sins’, and that may be so. But for me, it’s a human tragedy.”
He added: “There is no redemption here. He is too well known, he is too isolated now.
“People tend in these circumstances to have relish, to treat it with an absence of christianity, an absence of forgiveness and an absence of that sort of compassion that I think people naturally have.”
Brolly concluded: “What could be worse for him? It’s hard to think how his life could be worse now, how genuinely he has destroyed it Another fallen angel.”
Judge Martin Nolan described Carey as a “formidable sportsman in both hurling and handball” and “one of the best known hurlers ever”, stating on Monday that those who gave him money were “good-natured people who wanted to help a person in need”.
He observed that fraudsters often exploit human weaknesses, typically greed.
“This is not the case here, Mr Carey exploited the good nature of people,” he said.
The judge highlighted that Carey had taken advantage of people’s goodwill, earned through his status as an “outstanding sporting personality”.
In addition to financial loss, the judge said people had lost “a certain amount of belief in humanity”.
“It’s a very serious matter, it is reprehensible behaviour and it’s bad behaviour.”
He confessed it was “very hard to know what motivated Mr Carey” but since entering his guilty pleas, he had been subjected to “public odium and ridicule” and his “good name will probably never recover”.
The judge predicted that Carey would likely face a difficult life upon release.
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