CANADA
National Catholic Reporter
by Isabella R. Moyer on May. 02, 2012 NCR Today
I received an email this morning from a friend in Ireland. She was spitting mad after watching the BBC’s “This World” last night. The program claimed that in 1975, Cardinal Seán Brady, the current primate of Ireland, had names and addresses of those being abused by Fr. Brendan Smyth but did not share these with either police or parents.
Brady was quick to issue a statement in his defence. While it contained a few sentences of sadness and regret, the bulk of the statement focused on deflecting the blame to others. His rationale included the fact that the present guidelines for reporting sexual abuse were not in place at the time. And even if they were, he would not have been considered a “designated person” according to present state guidelines and therefore not obligated to notify the legal authorities.
Here in Canada, the Western Catholic Reporter published a story this week called “Abuse crisis needs more talk.” Sr. Nuala Kenny is a pediatrician and was a member of the five-member commission that examined sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage and in the St. John’s, Newfoundland, archdiocese in the late 1980s. She also helped develop the guidelines approved by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1992. These were the first national church guidelines in the world to deal with clergy sexual abuse.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.