BELFAST (UNITED KINGDOM)
Sunday World [Dublin, Ireland]
April 19, 2023
By Ciaran O'Neill
New inquiry could soon begin into the horrific abuse of children by priests and other religious figures in Northern Ireland.
Victims of clerical abuse in Northern Ireland are to be asked to come forward and tell their heart-breaking stories.
It marks the start of a process which could lead to a new inquiry into the horrific abuse of children by priests and other religious figures.
An inquiry has already been held into the years of abuse suffered by young people living in institutions such as children’s homes and orphanages throughout Northern Ireland.
Some of these institutions were run by churches – but an inquiry has never been held into abuse carried out by members of the clergy in other venues, such as church buildings or the victims’ own homes.
The Northern Ireland Executive set up the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIA) in 2012.
It was the biggest child abuse public inquiry ever held in the UK.
The inquiry examined allegations of abuse in 22 homes and other residential institutions in Northern Ireland.
These were facilities run by the state, local authorities, the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland and the children’s charity Barnardo’s.
The largest number of complaints related to four Catholic-run homes.
The sexual abuse was carried out by priests and lay people.
Inquiry chair Sir Anthony Hart found shocking levels of sexual, physical and emotional abuse across the period 1922 to 1995.
As well as an apology, Sir Anthony also recommended at the publication of the inquiry’s final report in 2017 that abuse victims receive compensation and a memorial be created in their memory.
While the HIA covered abuse within church-run institutions, no similar investigation has been carried out into clerical abuse in other locations. That could soon change.
The Stormont Executive is seeking to award a contract for research into “historical clerical child abuse”.
This is being seen as the first stage in the process of having a HIA-type inquiry into the scandal of clerical abuse of children.
However, a victim of abuse in one of the institutions covered by the HIA said “lessons need to be learned” from how they were treated.
Despite the HIA’s recommendations being published in 2017, it was not until last year that victims received an apology at the Assembly from the institutions involved.
Many victims are still also waiting for compensation for what they endured.
Margaret McGuckin, from Survivors & Victims of Institutional Abuse (SAVIA), who herself suffered institutional abuse as a child, said any victims of clerical abuse who come forward needed to be supported.
“There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the experiences we went through with the inquiry into institutional abuse,” she said.
“We were told by those involved ‘we are going to do this, we are going to do that’ and then they disappeared.
“It took years for us to get the apology. That’s the way it was, so they have to do it right this time.”
Despite what she and others went through during the HIA inquiry, Ms McGuckin said it had been “worthwhile” and urged all abuse victims to come forward.
“It was a battle and it broke me in the end,” she said.
“I’m a changed person but to see so many people get their day to speak about what happened them and to know it was not their fault made it all worthwhile.
“Also, to have the apology from the institutions showed the world where the blame lay for this abuse.”
Amnesty International is among the organisations which have called for an inquiry into clerical abuse in Northern Ireland.
The organisation said in the absence of an independent public inquiry, the scale of clerical child sexual abuse in Northern Ireland “remains unknown”.
Last year, Archbishop Eamon Martin, the leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland, said clerical abuse “is like an open wound that has never been able to heal”.
Archbishop Martin said he supported criminal prosecutions in relation to abuse cases and added the church should be open to official inquiries.
There have been several high-profile cases involving Catholic priests who abused children, the most notorious of which was Father Brendan Smyth.
Smyth was convicted in the 1990s of dozens of offences against children over a 40-year period.
Despite allegations being previously investigated by church officials as far back as 1975, it was almost 20 years before he was jailed.
In 1991, Smyth was arrested and released on bail, before spending the next three years out of the reach of police in Northern Ireland, when he stayed at his order’s Kilnacrott Abbey in County Cavan.
His case led to the collapse of the Republic’s Labour/Fianna Fáil coalition government, when it emerged there were serious delays in his extradition to Northern Ireland in 1994.
When Smyth finally appeared before a Belfast court, he was convicted of 43 charges of sexually assaulting children in Northern Ireland and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Upon his release from prison, Smyth was immediately arrested and extradited to the Republic.
In 1997, the convicted paedophile admitted to 74 charges of child sexual abuse over a 35-year period.
Smyth died of a heart attack in prison in August 1997, just a month into his 12-year prison sentence.
Victims of another paedophile priest have come forward in recent years to speak about the abuse they suffered.
Father Malachy Finnegan taught and worked at St Colman’s College in Newry from 1967 to 1987, spending the last decade as the school’s president.
He went on to serve as a parish priest in Clonduff, County Down.
The priest, who died in 2002, was accused of a long campaign of child sexual abuse but was never prosecuted or questioned by police.
In 2018, it emerged that the Diocese of Dromore had settled a previous claim made by one of his alleged victims.
At that stage, the board of governors at St Colman’s condemned the abuse inflicted by Finnegan while he worked there.
His image was also removed from the school’s photographs.