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	Abused Women Criticise O'Callaghan Comments By Barry Roche Irish Times July 18, 2011 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0718/1224300883809.html VICTIMS: FORMER DIOCESE of Cloyne child-protection delegate Msgr Denis O'Callaghan was yesterday accused by two victims of clerical sex abuse of failing to appreciate the trauma they and others have suffered as a result of being violated by priests. Both women, who were abused by a priest in Cloyne, accused Msgr O'Callaghan of being dismissive of their pain after he said he expected to return to his radio programme Thoughts on Sunday on the Cork station C103 after "this is all blown over". One said: "He just doesn't get it. When he said, 'When this is all blown over', it made my blood boil. The trauma of being abused never blows over. He should try living with it for 21 years and then he'd know it never blows over." The other woman was equally critical of Msgr O'Callaghan's comments. "He comes out with all this stuff about his concern being for the victims but that comment really says it all about his true feelings: that it's all a bit of a to-do about nothing that will blow over and everything will be all right again. Well, he's wrong," she said. Speaking on C103's Cork Today programme, Msgr O'Callaghan denied he had said it was wrong to report suspected abusers to the Garda and the HSE but said his commitment as a priest was to provide pastoral care to all involved in the allegations. His first concern was to put counselling in place for the victims of clerical child sex abuse and his second was to put monitoring in place on the alleged abuser so the danger of any recurrence would be reduced as much as possible. "I have met so many victims, they have been through a terrible time and the fact that they have been hiding this for so many years, that has added to the distress they have suffered, so I don't blame them at all for feeling hard done by the church." Msgr O'Callaghan also disputed a criticism by Cloyne commission chairperson Judge Yvonne Murphy in the Cloyne report that he seemed more emotionally sympathetic to alleged abusers than to those who complained of being abused. He said that was true in some cases only. "This is very natural: if you have an accused in hospital, terminally ill, you have to meet the victim as well but emotionally you can't go in coldly as a professional and not feel for this man who is terminally ill and will be dead in a short time. "[But] not to every abuser, because once you got the situation clear in your mind, it was very difficult to deal with them and to accept that a priest would do what they had done, that was very hard to accept," he said. Cork Today producer John Paul McNamara said the programme received more than 400 phone calls about the interview with Msgr O'Callaghan, all criticising his comments and his role in handling clerical child sex abuse.
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