BishopAccountability.org
	Church's Sins of Omission Irish Times December 18, 2010 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/1218/1224285829578.html IN 1988, 10 years after the first complaint about Fr Tony Walsh’s sexually predatory habits, the danger he represented was described unambiguously to the Dublin church by a psychologist from the Stroud treatment centre. Chancellor of the archdiocese Monsignor Alex Stenson noted his comments: “[Walsh] is extremely compulsive – there have been an awful lot of children involved, he is a very disturbed man. He is always going to be dangerous. He could not be let near schools, children, Confessions without a grille, etc. . .”. By that stage in Walsh’s career not only did the archdiocese know he was a serial abuser – it had known that since 1985 – but also how dangerous he was. His “pattern of behaviour”, the Murphy report says , “is such that it’s likely he has abused hundreds of children”. For most of that time Walsh’s offending was facilitated – as newly published “chapter 19” confirms in line with the report’s earlier findings – by an archdiocese that effectively shielded him from the State authorities. Its priorities in seeking to avoid scandal and preserve its secrets, and its ineffective disciplinary procedures, compounded its moral culpability. The report says, for example, that when Walsh was transferred to Westland Row in 1985 “it was clearly an attempt to avoid further scandal in Ballyfermot. There was an established clear danger to children and yet the welfare of children simply did not arise for consideration.” And the experience of those like Stenson trying unsuccessfully, without real sanctions at their disposal, to control an unrepentant Walsh – his repeat abusing and refusals to obey instructions either to attend residential treatment, not to represent himself as a priest, or to stay away from Ballyfermot – should have caused pause for thought. The church’s insistence that it could remain a law unto itself was not only profoundly undemocratic, it simply did not work in protecting children or, ultimately, itself. The Walsh chapter, written in Judge Yvonne Murphy’s spare and riveting prose, reflects much of what we have read already about the church’s systemic failures. It fills out, rather than adds to, the case made by the commission’s full report in important respects. The Garda failure to pursue its initial criminal investigation is rightly characterised as “unacceptable”, as is the archdiocese’s own “desultory” investigative efforts. Archbishop Connell is commended for his decisiveness in pursuing Walsh’s laicisation despite a Vatican ruling to the contrary. In that context, however, the commission also makes clear its justifiable concern at canon law’s acceptance of paedophilia as a medical condition and hence as a defence in sexual abuse cases. The chapter also returns the spotlight to the familiar issue of individual responsibility and accountability: can those who were aware at the time of Walsh’s role escape personal responsibility with the argument that they were just cogs in a machine, and not individually responsible for reporting crimes to the Garda? Specifically, bishops Eamonn Walsh and John McAreavey, who are still serving, have questions to answer.
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