Press Statement on Release of 30 Safeguarding Review Reports

National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church
May 4, 2016

http://www.safeguarding.ie/press-statement-on-release-of-30-safeguarding-review-reports/

The final tranche of reports includes 5 orders reviewed under the full set of standards as they are active in ministry and would have some contact with children. A further four that were reviewed under a smaller set of standards as they have no contact with children but did have allegations made against them in the past – necessitating an examination of how they handled them. The remaining 21 Orders have no contact with children and no allegations, and so were assessed against the limited number of standards that apply.

“The vast majority of these reports are positive and reflect orders that have taken on the goals of child safeguarding and made it integral to what they do,” said Teresa Devlin, CEO, NBSCCCI (National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland). “Unfortunately, in two cases, the Salvatorians and the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, we have seen little evidence that the standards have been properly implemented. The Salvatorians were particularly poor in relation to the monitoring of an accused priest. And in a number of cases poor record-keeping took place. ”

Of the reviews undertaken four congregations cannot be reported on or published, as they are included in the statutory review currently being undertaken as part of the Historical Inquiry into Child Abuse in Institutional Care in Northern Ireland (HIA). The NBSCCCI reports of these congregations will be publicly available following publication of the HIA report in 2017.

In the aggregate there have been 288 allegations made against 90 priests, brothers or sisters with just 10 criminal convictions arising therefrom. The allegations relate to the period between 1950 and 2002 with one incident in 2013.