IRELAND
RTE News
The latest reports by the Catholic Church’s child protection watchdog, focusing on 43 religious congregations, reveal that 325 allegations were made against 141 priests or brothers in Ireland since 1941, resulting in eight criminal convictions.
The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) audit of eight male religious orders and 35 smaller orders of nuns indicates that the Jesuit Order failed to tell the gardaí about at least 22 allegations of child sexual abuse made against its members in the past 40 years.
But NBSCCC CEO Teresa Devlin has said the Order had confirmed with gardaÍ that the cases concerned did not meet the threshold for reporting.
A Jesuit spokesperson said these cases were suspicions and concerns for which there were no reasonable grounds and that the board states that every allegation requiring reporting has been reported.
However, Ms Devlin said there were delays of up to four years in reporting substantial allegations to the gardaí in the early 1990s.
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.