IRELAND
Irish Times
Noel Whelan
I got to an early screening of the new film Spotlight before Christmas. It was a fascinating and dramatic film, although it was disturbing on many levels. I think it will really have an impact in Ireland as people go to see it.
The film tells of the Boston Globe’s investigation into the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse in the local Catholic archdioceses. The similarities between what happened in Boston and what happened in Ireland at or about the same time are striking. The extent of the abuse and the cover-ups was the same.
The first set of revelations in Ireland culminated with the resignation of Brendan Comiskey as Bishop of Ferns in 2002. The work of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation team was published the same year, and culminated in the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law.
The church on both sides of the Atlantic initially denied the problem existed. It then saw child abuse as a moral defect rather than a criminal activity. It placed offending priests on sick leave or shifted them from parish to parish. When in later life victims began litigation the church sought to buy silence in early settlements.
There was an organised pattern of resistance to disclose documents and records, and when these ultimately had to be handed over they revealed how the instinct almost always was to protect the institution above victims.
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