Priest Had Contact with Children Despite Abuse Claim

RTE News
May 4, 2016

http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0504/786031-child-protection/

A Catholic priest was allowed to continue contact with children for at least two years after 2002 when a relative told his order he had abused her.

The Salvatorian priest later admitted to abusing more than 100 children in Ireland.

The order concealed the allegation from Archbishop Desmond Connell when transferring the priest from his Dublin parish.

The case of Father A is outlined by the church's child protection watchdog in an audit of the Salvatorian Order by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

It states that the Salvatorians were particularly poor at monitoring of the priest between 2002, when a relative accused him of having abused her as a child, and 2004 when he began a course of treatment.

He was convicted three years later.

Despite a professional assessor's advice that he should be kept away from children, the order's provincial concealed from the then Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, the true reason for moving him from Dublin to Rome, where he continued to have access to children and worked as a hospital chaplain.

He has visited his former Dublin parish at least once, the audit states, and came to the attention of gardai when he visited a family in the provinces to discuss an allegation a girl was making against him.

Subsequently, he admitted to a counsellor in Britain to having sexually abused over 100 children between the ages of six and nine in Ireland, most of them girls.

The names of just nine are known to his order.

The church watchdog also criticises the Blessed Sacrament Fathers for failing to implement the church's child protection protocols.

In the 30 reviews undertaken in this tranche, 288 allegations were made against 90 priests, brothers or sisters giving rise to what the board calls "just" ten criminal convictions.

The Salvatorian Order issued a statement this evening in which it expressed its "regret and sorrow" over the events.

It said it fully accepted the recommendations of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland and would "honour them fully".

The statement said the Order acknowledged the Provincial Superior's response at the time was "completely inadequate and that it was a clear failure of the duty of our Order to protect children".

The statement added: "We express our deepest apology to anyone who was harmed by Father A and urge those who have not yet come forward to do so.

"We undertake to give anyone who was harmed a sympathetic hearing and to provide as much support as possible."

Case described as horrific and shocking

The CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children has described as "horrific" and "shocking" the case involving Father A.

Speaking on RTE's News at One, Teresa Devlin said: "It seems as if the priest was allowed to go around his business with impunity, without restrictions" in spite of the fact it was known in 2002 that he was abusing children.

She said that in 2002 the knowledge of priests abusing in the Archdiocese of Dublin was well-publicised, and from that point of view there were "no robust systems in place either to report to the statutory authorities the abuse by this priest, by the order, or to put any kind of restrictions on his ministry. So he was allowed to continue to do what he wanted to do and that is shocking, it is so recent."

She said the children were very young, that there are still a number of young women who are dealing with the aftermath of this abuse.

Ms Devlin said the letter, which was seen by the reviewers, did not give the true reason for his removal from Dublin to Rome, nor was the order in Rome advised of the true reason for this removal.

She said she understands he travelled quite extensively in Rome and Australia where it is possible he abused other children, though she said there is no evidence to that effect.

She said there is no evidence "that he was told that what he had done was wrong, there was no sense of outrage at what he had done".