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	If Brady Must Resign, Then So Should Many Lay People By David Quinn Irish Independent March 17, 2010 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-if-brady-must-resign-then-so-should-many-lay-people-2101156.html IRELAND -- HAD Cardinal Sean Brady taken the initiative and admitted his involvement in the Fr Brendan Smyth case there would still have been uproar, but he might also have been commended for his honesty and there might be less pressure on him to resign. It is unfathomable that he did not admit his involvement, especially with a court case pending. But should he resign? The answer is no, unless the standard we apply to him is applied to everyone. What is that standard? That's what we need to decide. Basically, Irish society needs to determine the exact circumstances under which people who have had any involvement at all in a child protection case must resign. What is the minimum we expect of people? How far back should we apply this standard? How far down the chain of command? If we are to judge this matter by the reaction to Cardinal Brady, then the standard is clear. If a person did not report a case to the police, no matter how junior they were at the time and no matter how many decades ago it happened, then that person should go. But do we really mean this? Because if we do, then we must be prepared to apply it to all organisations, otherwise we are singling out the church. For example, suppose a teacher back in 1975 learned of an abuse allegation against a colleague and he reported it to the principal but not to the gardai -- and it subsequently emerged that the teacher went to work in other schools where they abused other children. Should that teacher also resign, 35 years later? In America, the practice of moving teachers accused of abuse from one state school to another has been commonplace. It is called "passing the trash". We learned a few weeks back that Gerry Adams knew of an abuse allegation against his brother going back years and yet his brother was able to continue working in youth clubs. There was no serious pressure on Adams to resign. Maybe this was reasonable, maybe not. But if he was a bishop would we have deemed it reasonable? Who in the HSE should resign over Tracey Fay, the girl who died while in their care? No social worker was so much as named in the report, let alone put under pressure to resign. When Children's Minister Barry Andrews was asked about this, he said the reason was that there had been a "system failure"; and that is why no individuals were held accountable. He got away with that answer. Would a bishop? As we know, 23 children have died over the last 10 years while in the care of the HSE. Will there be even a single resignation as a result of these failures to properly protect children? It is extremely unlikely. Why is that? It is argued that we expect a higher standard of the church, or at least that the church preaches a higher standard to the rest of us. But when it comes to child protection, surely we must expect the same high standard of everyone? If not then we are saying that we expect the church to do its utmost to protect our children, but we expect a lower standard of, say, schools or the HSE. But clearly that would be absurd because it would mean, in effect, that we don't want our children equally protected everywhere. It was only in 1999 that the State published its own child protection guidelines, Children First, which are still not on a statutory footing. This would imply that the State itself was on its own "learning curve" with regard to this issue. Responding again to the Tracey Fay case, Barry Andrews said the HSE had learned its lessons and things were much improved since 2002. But the children at the centre of the horrific Roscommon incest case were only removed from their abusive parents in 2004. Maybe the HSE is still learning? In Germany, the Social Democrats -- no friends of the church -- have said it would be unfair to single out the Catholic Church in any official investigation of child abuse. A senior member of the ruling Free Democrats wants the Catholic Church in Germany investigated as it has been here. But the general secretary of the Social Democrats said: "I would advise Ms (Sabine) Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (Germany's justice minister) not to act as if we should only be looking for guilty parties in the Catholic Church." THAT stands in total contrast to the attitude prevailing here. For many people, or at least for the media, it seems that only abuse by priests needs to be pursued with total vigour and elicits total outrage. So we need to decide whether or not we believe all children deserve equal protection, and whether the same standards of accountability need to be applied across the board to all organisations. Only when we decide this should indeed be the case, can we justifiably call on Cardinal Brady to resign, not before. Contact: dquinn@independent.ie
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