IRELAND
Irish Times
Patsy McGarry
A total of 294 physical and emotional abuse allegations were made against 61 Nazareth Sisters, 40 now deceased. None was convicted in the courts. Just 115 were reported to police and health authorities.
Eight of the accused sisters remain in ministry, 13 accused are retired and one has left the congregation.
The Catholic Church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children was “unable to assess the extent to which the Sisters of Nazareth have dealt with the allegations and concerns that have arisen, due to the unavailability of any contemporaneous case file records”.
Accept severe criticism
Further, the sisters had been “exceptionally slow to take up their responsibility for child safeguarding, and they have to accept severe criticism for this. The first Church guidelines were published in Ireland in 1996, but it was 2015 before the congregation appeared to take any real action; this is completely unacceptable”.
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