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	New Laws on Child Abuse Needed Now By Alison O’Connor Sunday Business Post November 29, 2009 http://www.sbpost.ie/commentandanalysis/new-laws-on-child-abuse-needed-now-45905.html It used to be all the rage among people of a certain age to tell the younger generation that, when they were growing up, times were so tough they had to walk to school barefoot. ‘Shoelessness’ was held up as the ultimate in deprivation, and a clear-cut example to give to a generation who, their elders believed, had no concept whatsoever of hardship. In the past ten days or so, the weather has supplied material for a whole new collection of hardship stories to be retold for decades to come. There was so much bad news all in one go that the older generation to come is likely to be accused of gross exaggeration. But for the many people around the country whose homes and businesses have been devastated, the floods of 2009 are a horrible reality, tales of which will certainly bear re-telling to grandchildren. While all this chaos was going on, it was with a sense of growing dread that I awaited the publication of the report of the Commission of Investigation into how Dublin’s Catholic Archdiocese had handled allegations of clerical child sex abuse, and the horrors it would contain. We’ve had the Ferns Report and the Ryan Report, and this was going to be just as bad, if not worse, in many ways, although I did wonder whether, with everything else that was happening, the report would get the recognition and attention it deserved. Surely with so much bad news circulating, the temptation would be to resist taking on board fresh horrors. Thankfully, that does not seem to have happened. The raping of children by priests, and the Catholic Church’s facilitating of this activity through deliberate cover-ups, lack of action and a policy of simply moving dangerous clerics around, continues to leave us flabbergasted. Judge Yvonne Murphy did a fine job, and a crucial one. Her report is an extremely important piece in the Irish clerical abuse jigsaw, particularly as it highlights, not just the coverups by the Dublin archdiocese and other Church authorities, but the extent of them, as well as the facilitating of those cover-ups by the state. It socks it to the Church, making a nonsense of the notion that the abuse was hidden from view and that Church authorities were somehow taken by surprise. Ignorance was no defence - and anyway, the Church has a 2,000-year history of having to deal with paedophilia. Looking to more recent history, it pointed out how Dublin Archbishop Kevin McNamara decided to take out insurance against possible claims for child abuse. He did so at the beginning of 1987 and all other dioceses, except one, followed suit. It’s remarkable the skills these bishops showed in protecting the Church, its reputation and its assets - but not in protecting children. None of this is surprising to anyone even half-following clerical abuse in Ireland over the past 15 years, but it is significant that it has been officially recorded and acknowledged. The report also puts on record the connivance between the Church and the Garda in covering up the abuse, and the ‘‘inappropriate contacts between gardai and the archdiocese’’. It cited the case of Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan who, rather than launch an investigation, handed over the case of Fr Edmondus (a pseudonym) to Archbishop McQuaid for investigation in 1960. The report is almost understated in its language when it describes this as ‘‘totally inappropriate’’. Even though we are aware of the power of the Catholic Church, and the stranglehold it had over Irish society at one stage, it is still incredible to read, and realise, that a number of senior officers of the Garda, including Costigan, clearly regarded priests as outside their remit. The Murphy Report highlights how, while senior gardai were clearly kow-towing to the Church, regardless of the threat to children, some junior gardai did not take the same attitude. A similar situation was found to exist in Ferns, in particular in relation to the Monageer case. Very likely, this went on in the rest of the country, and it’s just that we have had proper investigations only into Dublin and Ferns in which it can be officially recorded. The shocking failures of the four Dublin archbishops and the auxiliary bishops make stark reading, particularly when you realise that many of the auxiliary bishops were subsequently promoted to their own dioceses around the country. This adds to the already-strong argument for the investigation to be widened to all dioceses. Without the completion of such a comprehensive report, we still allow the Church some wriggle room - which it will have no conscience about exploiting - as to the true extent of what took place. One of the few causes for optimism is the behaviour of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. The tone he struck in the run-up to the publication of the report is in stark contrast, not just to his predecessors, but to his current colleagues. He is clearly out of step, not just with these colleagues in Ireland, but also with the Vatican. It seemed to me that he made it clear last Thursday that he realised the Church was still incapable of policing itself in relation to child abuse, and that it should not be in a position to do so anyway. Hopefully, the irony of this call from within the Church was not lost on justice minister Dermot Ahern and the cabinet. The archbishop pointed out that this report, and the Ferns Report before it, have asserted that our current legal framework is simply not adequate to protect children. Sadly, he is a lone voice in the Catholic Church in Ireland. We have far too many examples of how his colleagues even still adopt the attitude of - as the report puts it - preserving the ‘‘status and assets of the institution’’ as their primary agenda, and not the protection of children. You only have to look at the recent failure to cooperate with the simple attempt by the HSE to gather statistical information on clerical child abuse for each diocese. Irish bishops could not be trusted in the past to protect children, and they cannot be trusted now. The report highlights how the state allowed the Church ‘‘to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes’’. If the government does not move quickly to bring in new laws to do so, it can only be concluded that this attitude still exists. Otherwise, after three horror-filled reports, how else can we explain the delay?
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