By Chris Moore
Irish Independent
March 16, 2010
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/chris-moore-club-protecting-monster-went-all-the-way-to-top-2100001.html
IRELAND -- FATHER Brendan Smyth was evil. He raped and buggered children, boys and girls, who came into his life. He often chose the children of families who regarded him as a trusted friend first and foremost. And then secondly as a priest.
Sure he was great with the kids. Always chasing them, tickling them and bringing them sweets.
He took them out on excursions to the cinema, along the coast for days by the sea with fish and chips and ice-cream.
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| Brendan Smyth is led from the Four Courts in Dublin after being sentenced to 12 years in July 1997 |
Sometimes when the children hid upstairs in their own home feigning illness to avoid contact with the priest, he went up the stairs . . . and he abused them while the parents made him his evening meal downstairs.
Then sometimes he exercised an even darker side of his perverted character. He took children away for an overnight visit . . . making them perform sexual acts on themselves and then on him.
And this is the man the church protected by silencing two witnesses against Fr Smyth in 1975, burying this kind of depravity by Fr Smyth.
But sometimes Smyth targeted helpless orphans, at Nazareth House in Belfast, for example.
Siobhan was one such unfortunate in 1968. She was just six when Fr Smyth began calling to see her at the home on Belfast's Ormeau Road.
The nuns showed the paedophile priest into a room where Siobhan would later be delivered to spend time alone with the priest.
Once when she complained to the nuns she was hit over the head with a bunch of keys and told to keep quiet.
To demonstrate the nature of Fr Smyth's abuses she described how he behaved with her: "I came home from ballet and I had my leotard on and I had my school skirt and he says to me, 'Pull your skirt up.' I was sort of scared and didn't know what to do and he says: 'I told you to pull your skirt up.' So I pulled my skirt up. He put me on his leg and started shaking it so his hand kept going up my leg and I kept looking at him and he says, 'Turn your head and don't look at me' . . . I was crying and then he started putting his hands up my knickers and then up into my vagina."
Fortunately Siobhan had no meetings with any senior Catholic Church officials.
She was spared the distressing prospect of being cajoled into signing an oath of secrecy.
She was free to speak her mind, to tell the truth about the dreadful sexual abuse inflicted on her by Fr Brendan Smyth of the Norbertine Order in Kilnacrott in Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan.
But imagine, for just a moment, if Cardinal Brady had heard her tell her story about abuse by Brendan Smyth.
Siobhan would not have been permitted to speak to me or to anyone else.
But this is exactly what Cardinal Brady did in 1975.
He heard the heart-rending story of pain suffered by two children.
They described to Cardinal Brady just what happened to them. When he reads Siobhan's words above, maybe Cardinal Brady will be transported back to the day he heard what happened to them.
He got them to sign away their freedom of speech.
Excommunication if they didn't?
And this he says with a straight face is not a cover-up.
Silence the witnesses. Isn't that what Hitler did?
Preserve the good name of the Catholic Church.
Evil wins when good men stand by and do nothing.
Perhaps something will prick Cardinal Brady's conscience, but judging by his performance up to now we should not hold our breath.
It defies belief that the cardinal, having heard such harrowing accounts of abuse, could simply move on and progress his career in the Catholic Church and forget about what he had heard.
It was not his job to do anything more than listen to the allegations from survivors of abuse, write down their words and pass them on to the bishop so that he could progress the complaints.
That's it, just forget about it.
I wonder how many times Cardinal Brady, then a 36-year-old plain Fr Brady, took notes at such secret tribunals?
Had he heard others also tell tales of horrific abuse at other secret tribunals that don't mean the word 'cover up'?
Did he really just get on with his life and believe he had done his duty?
Was he not moved at all by what he heard?
In 1994, I first heard someone describe the suffering of sexual abuse forced on them by a man trusted by parents -- and unfortunately I heard many more stories of abuse, too many in fact.
The broken relationships, marriages lost in the pain of surviving the horrific memories of the abuse suffered in childhood -- drink and drugs -- you just don't forget this kind of suffering.
I always found it difficult. It was only when my grand-daughter was born that I discovered just how deeply scarred I had become.
My wife asked me one day: "Why is it that I change all your grand-daughter's nappies?"
SO I find it difficult to understand how Cardinal Brady can believe he still has the trust and confidence of individuals who suffered the abuse of Brendan Smyth.
How he can really expect us to accept his assertion that by making the witnesses of abuse by Smyth sign an oath of silence that he is not perverting the course of justice and creating a cover up?
His position is untenable.
One survivor -- John -- told me last night: "Cardinal Brady is as arrogant as the abusers he clearly chose to protect."
As for his words that he will not resign unless told to do so by the Pope, there's no chance of that either.
And Cardinal Brady knew that when he said it.
The present Pope is part of the problem.
After all, for decades he has been telling bishops all over the world how to keep safe the church's reputation. It's the Vatican Boys' Club.
The problem of cover-up starts there to protect the good name of the church.
And it will end there, at the top because the slow trickle of truth has begun.
Soon the people will use their moral authority to ensure an end to the use of canon law as a means of protecting not only the church but the evil miscreants in its midst. For years the church got away with hiding behind canon law.
After all, there were no rules regarding children, sex abuse or justice for those whose lives were destroyed forever.
So it's an easy procedure to follow.
You start by getting the survivors of abuse to sign an oath of silence.
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