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  Release of Irish Child Abuse Report Faces Delay

By Eamon Quinn
Financial Times
July 22, 2009

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/738a4596-7611-11de-9e59-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=70662e7c-3027-11da-ba9f -00000e2511c8.html?nclick_check=1

An Irish government report investigating child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the Archdiocese of Dublin may not be made public until later this year because of cases that may be in the courts, Ireland's justice minister, Dermot Ahern, said on Tuesday.

The report by a commission led by Judge Yvonne Murphy investigated the response of the authorities, including the Irish Catholic Church, police and health bodies, to numerous allegations made against priests in the Dublin Diocese since the mid-1970s. The report will be referred to the Irish attorney general for advice on whether it can be made public immediately, said a spokesman for Mr Ahern.

The investigation into the Catholic Dublin diocese, which includes the capital city and surrounding counties, is expected to be one of the last in a series of investigations by commissioners the government set up almost ten years ago to investigate the scandals of widespread abuse by Catholic priests and religious orders. The reports established patterns of behaviour over many decades by church authorities, who, though aware of the allegations moved abusers to distant parts of the country, in some cases within days of the claims against clergy having been made.

In May, a government report by Mr Justice Sean Ryan detailed that thousands of victims in children's homes and so-called industrial schools run by Catholic religious orders over 70 years suffered harrowing abuse, including violent rapes. In 2005, a report into the Diocese of Ferns, in the south east of Ireland, revealed over 100 allegations were made against 21 priests during a 40 year period to 2002. An investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, in the south of the country, may start later this year.

The Dublin report was based on about 70,000 documents dating from the 1940s held by the diocese into allegations and suspicions involving 150 priests and about 450 victims.

Irish child care charity Barnardos, which is campaigning for the rights of children to be explicitly written into Irish Constitution, said it was clear that the Catholic Church in its dealings with child abuse allegations had over many years kept the knowledge in its own "closed circle".

 
 

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