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	No Law in 2005 to Prosecute for Not Reporting By Carol Coulter Irish Times July 18, 2011 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0718/1224300883358.html LEGAL ISSUES: THERE WAS no law available in 2005 under which Bishop John Magee could have been prosecuted for not reporting an instance of child abuse, legal sources have argued. It was reported over the weekend that the Director of Public Prosecutions had decided not to charge Bishop Magee with an offence after he received a file from the Garda on his failure to co-operate with a Garda investigation. The DPP refused to comment on this yesterday. In 2005 Bishop Magee conducted an interview with Fr Brendan Wrixon during which Wrixon admitted sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy. He was convicted and received an 18-month sentence for gross indecency, which was suspended. In a report for diocesan records, Bishop Magee said Wrixon had denied the offence, while he and Msgr O'Callaghan did not co-operate with the Garda investigation in 2006, according to the Cloyne report. However, in a report to the Vatican, Bishop Magee said Wrixon had admitted the abuse. An offence of "reckless endangerment", where it would be an offence to leave a child in a situation of danger when a person knew someone was a threat to children and was in contact with them, was created in 2006, but Wrixon's offence was committed in 2005. The 1997 Criminal Law Act makes it an offence to conceal an "arrestable offence", but legal sources said yesterday that this applied to those who did so for gain. Section 8 of the Act states: "Where a person has committed an arrestable offence, any other person who, knowing or believing that the offence or some other arrestable offence has been committed and that he or she has information which might be of material assistance in securing the prosecution or conviction of an offender for it, accepts or agrees to accept for not disclosing that information any consideration . . . shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years." The legal source said the offence lay in the taking of a reward or "consideration" for the non-disclosure of the offence, not the non-disclosure itself. The source also said this referred to "an arrestable offence", carrying a minimum sentence of five years. Many child abuse offences do not carry a five-year minimum sentence, therefore are not "arrestable" under the law, according to the source.
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