BishopAccountability.org
	Today's Murphy Report Should Anger All of US By Padraig O'Morain Herald November 26, 2009 http://www.herald.ie/opinion/todays-murphy-report-should-anger-all-of-us-1954004.html The focus of our anger as we read the Murphy Report today should be on the men who facilitated the abuse of children by priests -- or who blocked attempts by these victims and their families to get justice. Of course we will be angry -- very angry -- at the unnamed men who used their position of authority and trust to abuse children. But we will discover, I believe, that this cycle of abuse could have been broken if archbishops and others in authority in Dublin had tackled the issue head on. Instead, abusers were moved around and victims and their families were given the cold shoulder. I will always remember, as a reporter, the pain of families who desperately wanted a genuine, open hearing and acknowledge-ment from the archdiocese about what had been done to them or their children, but who were made to feel unwelcome and unwanted. Those people in authority in the archdiocese who treated the families in this way added to the harm that had been done. They should now be required to answer for their actions. We should also be angry that what we are getting today is an incomplete report. The Commission itself, led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, has already expressed its disappointment that the full report cannot be published. Parts of the report have been suppressed because of "decisions made by the DPP after the report was delivered to the Minister," it said last night. I sense an undercurrent of anger in the Commission's statement. We, the public, should be angry too. Blame We will not now know the full story of what was done or not done by church authorities or, crucially, by state authorities in response to reports of abuse by priests. The state got itself off the hook in relation to the abuse of children in institutions --- it was the state that sent children to these places but it certainly has not taken its share of the blame for what went on. What did the State -- gardai, health services, the Department of Justice for instance -- know about the abuse of children by priests? What did the State do about it? We need and deserve to know the answers. Today is not the end but the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, let us direct most of our anger at those who could have stepped in to stop abuse but didn't or who cold-shouldered families seeking redress.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.