Part of the reason why social liberalisaton was widely accepted by the 1990s was due to a very damaging series of scandals in that decade. The revelation that one senior Catholic bishop, Eamon Casey, fathered a child by a divorcée caused a major reaction, as did the discovery of a child abuse ring whereby offenders became clerics in order to use their position in the Roman Catholic Church to obtain access to victims—notably the infamous paedophile Father Brendan Smyth. Another bishop, McGee, subsequently resigned over his mishandling of child abuse cases in his diocese.