BishopAccountability.org
	Litany of Shame and Abuse By John Burke Sunday Business Post November 29, 2009 http://www.sbpost.ie/newsfeatures/litany-of-shame-and-abuse-45894.html The Commission of Investigation Report into Dublin Archdiocese - which found that members of the Catholic Church and the Garda Siochana conspired to conceal child abuse - is only the tip of the iceberg, according to victims and advocacy groups. The report found that several gardai prevented the prosecution of at least three sex abusers as far back the 1960s. It also found that a litany of archbishops and senior clerics concealed other vital evidence from families and investigators. However, nobody has ever been prosecuted for mismanaging or subverting an investigation into clerical child abuse. Gardai at the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (DVSA) unit have now been given copies of all files from the archdiocese in which any Garda collusion in the non-investigation of clerical sexual abuse has been identified, The Sunday Business Post understands. A spokesman for Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy said that all information revealed in the Murphy Report - including references to material which was in the diocesan archives, but for which no comparable record was held by Garda authorities - would be ‘‘examined in its entirety and acted upon’’. All investigations will be processed through the DVSA unit at Harcourt Square under the command of Detective Superintendent John McCann. However, doubts have emerged over whether it would be practical or possible to prosecute state officials who facilitated the continued abuse of children by clerics. Maeve Lewis, executive director of survivor support group One In Four, said it was ‘‘absolutely essential’’ that the Murphy Report should form the basis for prosecutions of identifiable individuals who knew of child abuse but failed to act to prevent its recurrence. In the case of two priests who were given pseudonyms, FrX and Fr Ioannes, the report found that senior gardai interfered with the investigation of these cases. Even more damning, the most senior garda in the state, former commissioner Daniel Costigan, gave the late Archbishop John Charles McQuaid physical evidence - photographs of children - about an abuser who worked as a chaplain at Crumlin Children’s Hospital in 1960. Abuse victim Andrew Madden told The Sunday Business Post that, in the light of previous investigations, he doubted whether ‘‘there would ever be any such prosecution, now or ever’’. In 1995, Madden became the first person in the state publicly identified as a victim of clerical abuse. He was maltreated by the notorious Fr Ivan Payne, whose case was highlighted as having been particularly badly handled by the former archbishop, Cardinal Desmond Connell. ‘‘I cannot imagine anyone actively pursuing people in the archdiocese or any other gardai over their mismanagement of a single complaint," said Madden. ‘‘There was ample evidence of the mishandling of clerical abuse by Archbishop Desmond Connell in 2002, and I don’t have any faith that the gardai or the DPP will be any more proactive now after last week’s report." Legal problems The report by Judge Yvonne Murphy - in conjunction with lawyers Hugh O’Neill and Ita Mangan - identified what they saw as ‘‘problems’’ in prosecuting people who were aware of the abuse for failing adequately to follow up complaints. A major Garda investigation began after RTE aired the Cardinal Secrets programme in 2002, which identified nine clerics in the Archdiocese of Dublin who were linked to abusing children. The investigating unit was mandated at the time to consider whether charges could be brought for ‘misprision of felony’, where a person conceals from the authorities knowledge of a felony. Murphy said the problem with attempting to prosecute such an offence related to complex ‘‘legal difficulties caused by the abolition of the distinction between felony and misdemeanour’’ in the 1990s. Most of the offences in the report predate the Criminal Justice Act 1996, which introduced a crime of reckless endangerment of a child, according to Madden. As a result, the common-law offence of misprision of felony was never tested in any file submitted to the DPP as a result of the 2004 garda review. To date, just eight priests who served in the archdiocese of Dublin have been convicted of their crimes, while three more are before the courts, according to the latest update from the archdiocese. The Commission after Dublin Last week’s report found that four archbishops - from McQuaid up to Desmond Connell, who retired in 2004 - had been aware of abuse allegations against priests since the 1960s, as well as of the subsequent movement of these priests from one active ministry to another. The abuse was also known to ‘‘many’’ auxiliary bishops and other senior diocesan clerics in Dublin. Madden said that, if it were not practical to extend the commission to cover all 26 dioceses at once, then it would be ‘‘a good start’’ to begin examining dioceses which were operated by former Dublin auxiliary bishops about whom the commission had expressed concern, such as Bishop Donal Murray of Limerick. Murphy’s commission is currently investigating the handling of abuse allegations in the diocese of Cloyne in Cork, a rising from concerns expressed by the Church’s independent monitoring body, headed by Ian Elliott. The Health Service Executive is currently collating replies from each diocese to an audit of compliance measures. The only body likely to be able to assess the scale of allegations in all 26 Irish dioceses - via five-yearly mandatory reports from each bishop - is the Vatican-based Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. However, it declined to engage in substantial correspondence with the commission during the commission’s investigations. Reparations for survivors Survivors’ groups have not indicated that they are seeking additional reparation from the archdiocese following last week’s report. ‘‘This was never about money," Madden told The Sunday Business Post. Lewis said that One In Four was still digesting the report and it was ‘‘far too early to think about money’’. The Dublin archdiocese has already spent considerable sums on legal settlements and treatments, drawing on funds maintained by the diocese and other senior Church figures. In 2002, the archdiocese established its Child Protection Service, which is funded from a Pastoral Services Fund drawn from Mass collections. This service costs about ˆ260,000 a year. While much of the Murphy Report relates only to the 46 sample priests whose cases were examined, a fuller picture of the cost of decades of clerical abuse is derived from archdiocesan records. In his last update on the status of extant investigations, settlements and investigations, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin revealed that 120 civil claims had come before the courts in connection with 35 priests. The archdiocese had paid out ˆ12.4 million in settlements and legal fees, most of it covered by the Church’s insurer. Between 1996 and 2008, almost ˆ700,000 had been spent on the treatment of victims of child sex abuse. The money came from the diocese’s Curial Trust Fund, which was set up in 1986 as an amalgam of trusts established by previous archbishops. Some of this goes to fund counselling groups such as Faoiseamh, the Church-funded service to which other agencies increasingly refer victims of clerical abuse. The archdiocese has spent a further ˆ564,000 on the treatment of diocesan priests to date. Up until last year, ˆ320,000 of this went on treatment for 34 of the priests mentioned by the Commission. However, agencies which deal with survivors have had difficulty coping with shortfalls in finance arising. One In Four’s private donor funding has fallen by more than 40 per cent this year, and its HSE grant dropped from ˆ640,000 in 2008 to ˆ611,000 this year. It also received ˆ60,000 from the Department of Justice for costs that might arise due to the Dublin Commission report. Lewis said the agency would spend just under ˆ1 million on services, staff wages and administration in 2009. Abuse survivor Marie Collins said that 18 months of counselling had played a pivotal role in allowing her to cope with the effect of her abuse and the subsequent cover-up. It was, she said, ‘‘like coming into the light’’. There should be ‘‘no reason why finances should not be provided’’ for any victim who needed counselling, she said. Child protection For Lewis, Madden and other victims’ advocates, the most pressing issue is not reparation, but ensuring that there is a framework in place to protect children in future. Barry Andrews, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, ha s said the government is committed to introducing legislation to allow sharing of so-called ‘‘soft information’’. This would permit agencies such as the gardai and HSE to record suspicions and claims which would not meet the requirements of a criminal investigation. Alan Shatter, Fine Gael’s children’s spokesman, said that the government continued to preside over a system where state agencies were failing at an alarming rate to protect children. Shatter said that, out of 24,668 reports to the HSE of children at risk last year, 9,304 were neither assessed nor investigated. Earlier this year, Lewis said One In Four was aware of clerical abuse complaints in three Catholic dioceses where bishops had failed to act in accordance with Church guidelines. ‘‘Nothing has occurred to change our view that these cases were live and serious issues," she said last week. However, she said that, due to issues of confidentiality, she could not identify the dioceses to which she was referring. Even if the Church observes its own guidelines, by requiring accused clerics to stand down from active ministry, and informs all relevant civil authorities, the Murphy Report identified what it saw as a legislative lacuna in the legal role played by the HSE. Legally, it said, parents or guardians were responsible for dealing with a child’s welfare in cases of extra-familial abuse, such as clerical abuse. Martin raised the same issue in a speech at Crumlin Children’s Hospital last Friday. ‘‘Notification to the health board of alleged abuse by priests does not seem to serve any useful purpose if the health boards do not have any power to do anything about it," the report found.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.