Catholic Church in Ireland Apologises over Child Abuse, Jamaica Observer, November 27, 2009

Catholic Church in Ireland Apologises over Child Abuse

Jamaica Observer
November 27, 2009

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20091126T190000-0500_164580_OBS_CATHOLIC_CHURCH_IN_IRELAND_APOLOGISES_OVER_CHILD_ABUSE_.asp

DUBLIN, Ireland - Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin speaks to the media in Dublin, yesterday. The archbishop said no words of apology will ever be sufficient to the victims of child abuse.

DUBLIN, Ireland (AFP) - Ireland's Catholic Church apologised and admitted its shame yesterday after a damning new report showed it covered up child sex abuse over more than three decades.

The Irish government also said sorry for failing to protect children after the latest report, published six months after a first landmark study revealed widespread abuse of children in Catholic care."I offer to each and every survivor my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened," said Diarmuid Martin, who has been archbishop of Dublin since 2004.

"I am aware that no words of apology will ever be sufficient," he said, adding that "the fact that many abusers were priests constituted both an offence to God and an affront to the priesthood."

Following a three-year investigation in the Dublin Archdiocese, the country's largest, the report concluded that four archbishops routinely protected abusers and failed to inform police of the allegations.

"The volume of revelations of child sexual abuse by clergy over the past 35 years or so has been described by a Church source as a 'tsunami' of sexual abuse," said the report.

The government also immediately apologised.

"Whatever the historical and societal reasons for this, the government... apologises, without reservation or equivocation, for failures by the agencies of the state in dealing with this issue," it said in a statement.

The judicial probe discovered that the archbishops did not report abuse to police until the 1990s as part of a culture of secrecy and an over-riding wish to avoid damaging the reputation of the Church.

The report said: "All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities."

It found that children who complained "were often met with denial, arrogance and cover-up and with incompetence and incomprehension in some cases. Suspicions were rarely acted on."

The study comes just six months after a landmark report in May horrified mainly Catholic Ireland by revealing widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children in Catholic-run institutions dating back to the 1930s.

Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said he read the findings with "a growing sense of revulsion and anger" and promised there would be "no hiding place" for the perpetrators