Irish church and police covered up child sex abuse, says report 

Devastating report on abuse of children by clergy from 1975 to 2004 accuses church and Garda of colluding to cover up scandal 

guardian.co.uk

Thursday 26 November 2009  2009 17.44 GMT

Ireland's police colluded with the Catholic church in covering up clerical child abuse in Dublin on a huge scale, according to a damning report on decades of sex crimes committed by priests.

The devastating report on the sexual and physical abuse of children by the clergy in Ireland's capital from 1975 to 2004 accuses four former archbishops, a host of clergy and senior members of the Garda Síochána of a cover-up.

The three-volume report found that the "maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets" was more important than justice for the victims.

Four former archbishops in Dublin – John Charles McQuaid, who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan, who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara, who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell – were found to have failed to report their knowledge of child sexual abuse to the Garda from the 1960s to the 1980s. But the report added that all the archbishops of the diocese in the period were aware of complaints.

The report, launched today by the Irish justice minister, Dermot Ahern, also concluded that the vast majority of priests turned a "blind eye" to abuse, although some individuals did bring complaints to superiors, which were not acted upon.

The report, commissioned by the government, strongly criticises the Garda and says senior members of the force regarded priests as being outside their investigative remit. The relationship between some senior gardai and priests and bishops in Dublin was described as "inappropriate".

Rather than investigate complaints from children, gardai simply reported the matter to the Dublin Catholic diocese, the report says. The Garda Síochána is accused of connivance with the church in stifling at least one complaint of abuse and letting the alleged perpetrator flee the country.

Ahern said there should be no hiding place for abusers. "The persons who committed these dreadful crimes will continue to be pursued. They must come to know that there is no hiding place. That justice – even where it may have been delayed – will not be denied," he said.

He told a press conference: "I read the report as justice minister. But on a human level – as a father and as a member of this community – I felt a growing sense of revulsion and anger at the horrible, evil acts committed against children."

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre welcomed the report, saying it was "another acknowledgment of the abject failure of our society to take care of our children".

The report states that senior clerical figures covered up the abuse over nearly 30 years and that the structures and rules of the church facilitated that cover-up. It says that state authorities facilitated the cover-up by allowing the church to be beyond the reach of the law.

The Murphy Commission of Inquiry into the abuse of children in Dublin identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004. It also stated that since May 2004, 130 complaints against priests operating in the Dublin archdiocese had been made.

The report details the cases of 46 priests guilty of abuse as a representative sample of 102 priests within its remit. But it concludes that there was no evidence of an organised paedophile ring in the Dublin archdiocese, although it says there were worrying connections. One priest admitted abusing more than 100 children. Another said he had committed abuse every two weeks for more than 25 years.

The report highlights the case of a Father Carney and Father McCarthy who it claims in one case both abused the same child. The abuse by Carney often occurred at swimming pools, sometimes when he was accompanied by another priest.

The report states that it was not until 1995 that the archdiocese began to notify civil authorities of complaints of abuse. The commission concludes that in the light of this and other facts, every bishop's primary loyalty was to the church itself.

A move by the archdiocese to take out insurance against potential compensation claims arising from abuse, according to the report, proved knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost.

The Garda Síochána's current commissioner, Fachtna Murphy, said the report made for "difficult and disturbing reading, detailing many instances of sexual abuse and failure … to protect victims."

Pope Benedict was urged today to go to Ireland and apologise for his clergy's behaviour. John Kelly, of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said only a papal visit would exonerate the worldwide church in the abuse scandals.

Abuse reports

Since June 1994, when paedophile priest Father Brendan Smith was sentenced to four years in prison for the abuse of children in Northern Ireland, there have been three major reports into the abuse of children at the hands of Ireland's Catholic clergy:

• October 2005 the Ferns report detailed extensive child abuse and the cover-up of paedophile activity in the south-east of Ireland.

• November 2005 Judge Yvonne Murphy was appointed to head a commission of investigation into clerical child abuse in the Dublin diocese, which concluded today.

• May 2009 the Ryan report detailing abuse at orphanages and industrial schools run by Catholic religious orders across the state was published.

From The Times

Times Online

26 November  2009 (27 November in UK)

David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland connived with the authorities in a cover-up spanning decades to shield paedophile priests from prosecution, an official report concluded yesterday. Hundreds of crimes against children were not reported as the four archbishops of the Archdiocese of Dublin remained wedded to the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets”.

Instead, the church hierarchy shuffled the sex offenders from parish to parish, allowing them to continue to prey on victims. In some cases paedophile priests were even promoted. The 750-page report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse on the Dublin archdiocese — the second significant inquiry this year to expose appalling levels of sexual abuse of minors in Ireland under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church — said that it had uncovered a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy throughout the period that it investigated between 1975 and 2004.

It said that the State had helped to create the culture of cover-up and that senior police officers regarded priests as “outside their remit”.

“The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes,” it concluded.

“The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities.

“The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.”

While the inquiry found no evidence of a paedophile ring, it said that there were some worrying connections and that one priest admitted sexually abusing more than 100 children.

Another admitted that he abused on a fortnightly basis during his 25-year ministry. One priest, against whom a single complaint was made, admitted abusing at least six other children.

Over the period within the report’s remit “the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages”, it said.

“Instead, the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members — the priests.”

Four archbishops, John Charles McQuaid, who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan, who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara, who died in 1987, and Cardinal Desmond Connell, retired, did not hand over information on abusers.

The first files in the cases of 17 priests were handed over by Cardinal Connell in 1995 but, even then, he had records of complaints against at least 28 priests.

In one example of what the report called inappropriate contacts between the authorities and the archdiocese, it took police 20 years to decide to prosecute a priest.

Allegations were made against one priest, known as Friar Edmondus, but Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan handed the case to Archbishop McQuaid and took no other action.

“A number of very senior members of the Gardai, including the Commissioner in 1960, clearly regarded priests as being outside their remit,” the report said.

“There are some examples of Gardai actually reporting complaints to the archdiocese instead of investigating them.”

The commission examined complaints made against 172 named priests and 11 unnamed priests before concentrating on a representative sample of 46. Altogether 320 children had made complaints about the 46 clerics, 11 of whom have been convicted of sexual assaults. “Unfortunately, it may be that the very prominent role which the Church has played in Irish life is the very reason why abuses by a minority of its members were allowed to go unchecked,” the report said.

The Church in Ireland has been plagued by sex scandals for at least two decades. The disclosures in May of floggings, slave labour and gang rape in many of the now abolished industrial and reform schools eroded the Church’s moral authority further.

Similar abuse cover-up charges have dogged the Catholic Church in other countries, especially the United States. Seven dioceses there have filed for bankruptcy protection to shield themselves from lawsuits by abuse victims.

Abuse cases have also been reported in Britain, Australia, Austria, Canada, France and Poland.

The Pope has condemned sexual abuse by clergy and said that paedophile priests should be brought to justice. He met abuse victims during his 2008 visit to the US.

Dermot Ahern, the Irish Minister for Justice, said: “I read the report not as Justice Minister but on a human level. As a father and as a member of this community, I felt a growing sense of revulsion and anger.

“Revulsion at the horrible evil acts committed against children. Anger at how those children were then dealt with and how often abusers were left free to abuse. What is of the utmost importance now is that we continue to pursue relentlessly the perpetrators of abuse to bring them to the justice they deserve.”

Diarmuid Martin, the current Archbishop of Dublin, said: “I offer to each and every survivor my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened.”

“I am aware that no words of apology will ever be sufficient,” he said.

“The fact that many abusers were priests constituted both an offence to God and an affront to the priesthood.”

Fachtna Murphy, the current Garda Commissioner, said that he was “deeply sorry”.

Seeking redress

Taoiseach apologises to abuse victims (1999) An explosive documentary series, States of Fear, was broadcast on Irish television detailing the abuse suffered by children throughout the entire childcare system. In response to the programme, Bertie Ahern apologises to the victims and sets up the Commission to study alleged abuses dating back to 1936

Complaints of child abuse (2001) More than 3,000 complaints were made to the Commission by people alleging that they were abused as children within Irish educational institutions

The Laffoy Commission (1999-2003) Judge Laffoy resigned as the chair of the Commission after four years. She blamed the Irish Government for causing delays to the commission’s work

Reuters

Thu Nov 26, 2009 9:38am EST 

Monday, 9 Nov 2009 11:10am EST (Reuters) - Ireland published a report on Thursday saying church authorities in Dublin covered up child sexual abuse until the mid-1990s.

Following are details of other sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church around the world.

UNITED STATES - 2002 - Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law resigned over charges he transferred clerical abusers to other parishes to cover up the scandal.

-- June 2002 - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops directed dioceses to investigate all charges of sexual abuse.

-- February 2004 - Independent researchers commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said a total of 10,667 people accused U.S. priests of child sexual abuse from 1950 through 2002. More than 17 percent of accusers had siblings who were also allegedly abused. Among accusers, 47 percent said they had been abused numerous times.

-- July 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating as far back as the 1940s in the largest compensation deal of its kind.

-- April 2008 Pope Benedict met victims of sexual abuse by priests during his visit to the United States in an effort to heal the scars. The U.S. Church has paid some $2 billion in settlement to victims since the scandal first broke in 1992.

-- October 2009 - The diocese of Wilmington, Delaware filed for bankruptcy protection. It later agreed to provide documents to alleged sex abuse victims to postpone the start of about 80 civil cases. Since 2002, the Wilmington diocese has settled eight cases for an average of about $780,000 each.

IRELAND - April 2002 - Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns, one of Ireland's best-known clerics, resigned over his handling of charges against a priest of his diocese who committed suicide in 1999 while facing 66 charges of sexual abuse.

-- March 2009 - Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, under fire for his handling of reports of sexual abuse, quit his daily duties to deal with the inquiry.

-- May 2009 - The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse issued a harrowing five-volume report that took nine years to compile. It said priests beat and raped children during decades of abuse in Catholic-run institutions.

-- November 2009 - A government-commissioned inquiry into abuse in Dublin from 1975 to 2004 released on Thursday said church authorities covered up widespread cases of child sexual abuse until the mid-1990s in a misuse of the Church's central role in Irish society.

AUSTRALIA - July 2008 - On a visit to Australia, Pope Benedict apologized for sexual abuse by clergy, condemning it as "evil" and saying abusers should be brought to justice. At that time there had been 107 convictions for sexual abuse in the Catholic Church there.

AUSTRIA - July 2004 - Austrian News magazine Profil ran pictures of priests kissing and groping seminarians at a Roman Catholic seminary in the St. Poelten diocese.

BRITAIN - July 2000 - London Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor acknowledged making a mistake in a previous post in the 1980s by allowing a pedophile priest to continue working. The priest was jailed in 1997 for abusing nine boys over a 20-year period.

CANADA - Oct 2009 - Bishop Raymond Lahey of Antigonish in Nova Scotia was charged with possession and importation of child pornography. Earlier this year, he had overseen a C$13 million ($12 million) settlement with clerical abuse victims in the Antigonish diocese in a case dating back to 1950.

MEXICO - March 2009 - Pope Benedict ordered a probe of the Legion of Christ priestly order whose founder was discovered to be a sexual molester with at least one child with a mistress. In 2006, Pope Benedict told the founder, Father Marcial Maciel, to retire to a life of "prayer and penitence." Maciel died in 2008.

heraldscotland.com

26 November 2009

Paedophile priests got away with decades of horrific child sex abuse because the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted police immunity, a devastating report has revealed.

Four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs and in some cases with the blessing of senior law enforcers.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law, it was revealed.

Details of a three-year investigation uncovered a sickening and devious policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the Dublin Archdiocese at the time.

It stunned the Republic and led to immediate and angry demands for negligent authorities and senior clerics to be prosecuted, including Cardinal Desmond Connell.

Maeve Lewis, of leading support group One In Four, hit out: “People, like Archbishop Connell, are as guilty as the priest who actually sexually abused the children.”

Andrew Madden, the first abuse survivor to publicly rip apart the Church’s veil of secrecy, said: “Those who turn a blind eye to these offences are as much a part of the problem as those who actually commit them.”

The Commission inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, uncovered a cosy relationship between the Church and authorities with senior gardai singled out for turning a blind eye and treating priests as untouchables.

Several senior gardai, including Commissioner Daniel Costigan in 1960, also felt priests were outside their remit, the report said.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern vowed to bring paedophile priests to justice, branding their reign of terror a systemic, calculated perversion of power and trust.

“The persons who committed these dreadful crimes - no matter when they happened - will continue to be pursued,” Mr Ahern said.

“They must come to know that there is no hiding place. That justice - even where it may have been delayed - will not be denied.”

Cardinal Connell, aged 83, accepted failures and apologised.

“I wish to express without reservation my bitter regret that failures on my part contributed to the suffering of victims in any form,” the Cardinal said.

It is the second time this year that the Irish Government and the Catholic Church has been rocked by the unimaginable extent of child abuse and a sanctioned clerical cover-up ultimately supported by state institutions.

In May, the Ryan Report detailed decades of abuse of thousands of children in schools, borstals and reformatories run by religious orders.

The Commission’s damning conclusion said: “The Dublin Archdiocese’s pre-occupation in dealing with cases of child sex abuse, at least until mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets.

“All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated.

“The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.”

The primary loyalty of bishops and archbishops, who moved abusive priests from parish to parish, was to the Church, the report said.

Four archbishops - John Charles McQuaid who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara who died in 1987 and retired Cardinal Connell - did not hand over information on abusers over the years.

The first files were only revealed by the Cardinal in 1995, but even then he had records of complaints against at least 28 priests.

Bishop James Kavanagh, who is dead, retired Bishop Dermot O’Mahony, retired Bishop Laurence Forristal, Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray and disgraced Bishop Brendan Comiskey, a reformed alcoholic who failed to control paedophile priests when in charge of the Ferns Diocese, also all knew about child abuse for many years.

Current Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who opened the once secret Church files to investigators, said: “Excuses, denials and minimisations were taken from priest abusers who were at the least in denial, at worst devious in multiple ways, and decisions were taken which resulted in more children being abused.”

Elsewhere the Commission’s findings suggest some gardai effectively consented to priests’ crimes.

A part censored section sets out shocking levels of garda connivance after officers stifled one complaint, failed to investigate another and allowed an unnamed priest to leave Ireland.

It notes a memo detailing the Director of Public Prosecution’s stance and the Commission states: “The office commented on the incomplete nature of the investigation, for example, the failure to take statements from other children and the parents but the ultimate conclusion was: ‘Even if one could, I wouldn’t bother extraditing him’.”

Commissioner Costigan was singled out for not investigating a priest, Father Edmondus, when he simply passed on allegations to Archbishop McQuaid.

However there was no evidence of a paedophile ring, the Murphy inquiry found, but it uncovered what it called worrying connections such as links between two priests who abused the same boys.

The inquiry looked at accusations against a sample 46 priests.

It detailed an insurance scheme for victims set up by the Archdiocese in 1987 and Church files show at the time Archbishops McNamara, Ryan and McQuaid had, between them, information on complaints against at least 17 priests.

Cardinal Connell was credited for instigating two secret canon law trials which took place over the 30-year period and led to two priests being defrocked.

Monsignor Gerard Sheehy, a powerful figure in the Archdiocese fought to prevent the internal prosecutions.