UNITED KINGDOM
The Conversation
Philip Gilligan
Last week the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) asked the Vatican to disclose details of child sexual abuse cases involving Catholic clergy for the period November 1995 to January 2014.
According to officials, the aims of the questionnaire include seeking to establish what legal action is taken against “perpetrators of sexual crimes” and what support is provided for victims. However, in England and Wales, as elsewhere, the Church is unlikely to be in any position to answer such questions in sufficient detail to satisfy either the UNCRC or survivors such as those represented by Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors (MACSAS).
During the dozen years since the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales declared it was fully committed to implementing all the recommendations of the Nolan Committee, research suggests there is a large gap between the Church’s rhetoric and the reality of its practice, while systems have been insufficiently robust to collect the information required.
In 2006, MACSAS suggested victims and survivors had not felt listened to, believed or supported, or “helped towards their healing” by the church. In 2011, following a survey of survivors’ experiences, the organisation concluded that victims “continue to be ignored and their needs disregarded by Church”.
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