By David Quinn
Irish Independent
May 13, 2011
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-staggering-that-church-still-not-fully-helping-in-child-protection-2646083.html
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| 'The upcoming report of the Pope's inspection team into the Irish church had better have teeth if it is to have real effect.' |
The latest annual report from the church's National Board for Safeguarding Children was published this week. Two facts from it stand out.
The first is that the "vast majority" of new allegations received by the board in the last 12 months are "historic in nature", as the press release puts it, meaning the alleged incidents didn't happen recently.
The second is that the bishops and the religious congregations are still not co-operating with the board as fully as they should be, which is simply staggering. Maybe it's because the media is distracted by the economy these days, meaning church authorities aren't under pressure to fully co-operate with the board.
This lack of co-operation has taken place on two main levels, the first clear-cut and the second a little murkier.
The first is that when the board contacted the dioceses and the orders to ensure they had an up-to-date list of allegations, they discovered that they did not.
Instead, they discovered that the dioceses and orders had passed on only a fifth of the 272 allegations they had received over the last 12 months to the board.
This did not mean the allegations had not been passed on to the civil authorities. Apparently they had been. But it beggars belief that the bishops and the orders would not pass on all the allegations they had received to a board that they themselves had set up.
Of course, you may be tempted to dismiss the importance of the board.
After all, if it was set up by the church, how credible can it be?
In fact, it is very credible. Its CEO is Ian Elliott, a Northern Presbyterian, and it is because of him that the Bishop of Cloyne, John Magee, had to resign over child protection failures.
So the board is fully independent and, as its latest annual report makes clear, it is determined to ensure that the church lives up to the highest possible child protection standards.
The board is undertaking a national review of child protection procedures throughout the church. This was at the request of the hierarchy.
But then the hierarchy failed to fully co-operate with the review it had ordered.
According to the board's annual report, the bishops and the orders had certain data protection concerns. There seemed to be a fear on their part that they couldn't give the board the names of all the people against whom allegations were made, presumably on the grounds that some of those people may not have been guilty of the alleged crimes.
Did the church authorities fear that the board would divulge those names, or else release information that would make it easy to identify the people concerned? We don't know because the bishops haven't said.
But we do know that the board, by its own reckoning, has "an approved and top-rate data protection policy".
In any case, whatever problem there was has seemingly been resolved, and a review of three dioceses has so far been completed. The report doesn't name them and we don't know the outcome of the reviews.
At the launch of the report, Elliott revealed that his office engaged in 13 hours of dialogue with the visitation team sent over by the Pope to inspect the church in Ireland.
Hopefully the visitation team will pay extremely close attention to the board's report and to the clear warning signs it contains that members of the board could resign in the months to come if they continue to encounter the frustrations they encountered in the last 12 months.
What a disaster that would be for the already battered image of the church.
As for the other stand-out item from the report, 272 new allegations of abuse were made against priests and brothers in the year up to the end of March. That is considerably up on last year's 197.
However, this does not mean abuse is still widespread. As mentioned, the vast majority of those allegations relate to incidents that are "historic in nature".
In fact, of the 197 allegations received in the 12 months before this latest period, none related to an incident that took place in the previous nine years.
Unfortunately, we don't know when the 272 alleged incidents occurred, nor do we know exactly how many of the accused priests and brothers have been previously accused. We have a right to know.
The bishops and the orders need to tell the board and then the board needs to tell the public.
To simply release those figures without breaking them down is akin to the Government releasing crime figures without telling us the type of crimes committed or when the crimes occurred. Overall, this latest report tells us that abuse is no longer as widespread in the church as it was, which is undoubtedly a very good thing.
But it also tells us that the church still has some way to go before its child protection structures are being run to the highest possible standard, and that is simply incredible.
The upcoming report of the Pope's inspection team into the Irish church had better have teeth if it is to have real effect.
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