independent.ie
Thursday, 28 July 2011
By Breda Heffernan and Michael Brennan
A SENATOR has used parliamentary privilege to name a priest against whom at least seven allegations of abuse were made, despite the fact he was never charged.
Fianna Fail senator Mark Daly told the Seanad seven formal allegations of child abuse had been made against Fr Donncha MacCarthaigh between 1986 and 2008.
The Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to pursue a criminal prosecution in relation to the allegations.
However, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart settled a civil case taken by one of the alleged victims.
Mr Daly said following this, in 1996, Fr MacCarthaigh had been placed under a restricted ministry order which was meant to restrict his activities.
Contravention
However, he said the priest had acted in “direct contravention” of this order and is understood to have acted as spiritual director for a pilgrimage to Fatima, where he could have had unsupervised access to children.
Speaking in the Seanad, Mr Daly said: “The head of the order did not know that he had gone to Fatima until I told him. Similarly, the priest travelled to Rome in Easter 2011 without informing the designated person or Pope Benedict in his role as Vicar of Rome.”
Fr MacCarthaigh is a former teacher at Colaiste an Chroi Naofa in Carraig na bhFear, Co Cork.
Mr Daly said he has asked Ian Elliott of the National Board for Safeguarding Children to carry out a review of the child protection policies of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
A priest at the order’s community residence in Cork, where Fr MacCarthaigh is understood to be based, last night directed calls to the head office in Dublin. There was no answer.
Maeve Lewis of support group One in Four said that while she believed only convicted sex offenders should be named, Mr Daly was in an “impossible position”.
“Senator Daly had two choices: to do nothing and hope that another child would not be sexually abused, or to act in order to protect children. I do not envy him this moral quandary. Ultimately, he decided to act.
“We are all aware of the horrendous consequences of secrecy and silence; therefore, in this particular instance, One in Four supports his decision.”
- Breda Heffernan and Michael Brennan
Irish Independent
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Order whose priest is named in Seanad as abuse accused says it brought claims to gardai
Updated 11.34am
THE RELIGIOUS ORDER who had a member named in the Seanad as being an alleged child abuser has said that it was in “full compliance” with child safeguarding procedures.
Senator Mark Daly of Fianna Fáil used his parliamentary privilege yesterday to name the priest from the Sacred Heart Missionaries yesterday. The senator said that the cleric had been reported to gardai in seven allegations of abuse between 1986 and 2008 but that the DPP had not pursued a criminal case against him. The Irish Independent and the Examiner name the priest this morning, while the Irish Times does not.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie today, Senator Daly said that he had spoken to the Sacred Heart Missionaries in relation to safeguarding children in this particular case. The Sacred Heart Missionaries wrote to Rome last year to have the priest laicised and removed him from religious duties. However, said Daly, the priest has still been going on Church-related trips. The senator said:
The issue here is that this man has gone to Fatima, breaching the Order’s own directives that he not. He went to Rome at Easter and they didn’t know about that either.
The senator said that he had discussed with the Order that they might write to all past pupils of the school the priest was involved in to say that abuse was suspected and to ask anyone with concerns to come forward. Daly said that he was told in a letter from the Sacred Heart Missionaries order three weeks ago that they would do so. He said he then received another letter last Thursday which said they would not. This, he said, led to his naming of the priest in the Seanad:
The primary concern here is that children are not being harmed.
When asked if he believed the Order had done all it could to protect children, he replied:
The evidence doesn’t show that.
The One in Four foundation, which helps survivors of child sexual abuse and fights for child protection, said this morning that they believed that Daly’s decision to name the priest “creates an uncomfortable dilemma for everybody who is concerned with the safety of children”. They said:
At One in Four we strongly believe that only convicted sex offenders should be named publicly and that everybody, regardless of their alleged crimes, should have the right to due legal process.
However, Executive Director with One in Four Maeve Lewis said that in this particular case, One in Four was supporting the move by Mark Daly to name the Sacred Heart Missionaries priest as being the subject of abuse complaints.
Lewis said that unfortunately it was the “major systemic flaw” of the justice and child protection system that had forced Daly’s hand in naming the priest. She said:
Senator Daly was placed in an impossible position. He was contacted as a public representative by people who gave him plausible and compelling information that they had been abused by this person and that they had exhausted all possible legal avenues. Senator Daly had two choices: to do nothing and hope that another child would not be sexually abused or to act in order to protect children. I do not envy him this moral quandary. Ultimately, he decided to act. We are all well aware of the horrendous consequences of secrecy and silence therefore, in this particular instance, One in Four supports his decision.
Details of the priest’s previous position as a school principal and as a selector with minor and underage GAA teams in the 1980s and 1980s were revealed in the Seanad yesterday.
The Sacred Heart Missionaries have declined to comment this morning other than to release a statement which addressed Senator Daly’s speech to the Seanad:
The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart are in full compliance with all necessary guidelines in regard to Child Safeguarding and all allegations known to us have, over the years, been brought to the attention of the Gardai, HSE and The National Office for Safeguarding Children. We have met with Senator Mark Daly, heard his understandable concerns and since then we have passed the detail of his concerns to an Garda Siochana. In keeping with our policies and practices, we have also responded to the issues raised and in doing so have kept the National Office for Safeguarding Children informed and sought their guidance.Recently we invited the National Office to review all our procedures and information available to us on this critically important matter. Persons who have allegations made against them have been taken out of active ministry and are subject to restrictions in regard to access and travel.We again sincerely apologise to those who were abused by members of our Order and we take this opportunity to again ask anyone who was abused by one of our members to report to An Garda Siochana, if they have not already done so. We will also offer whatever pastoral assistance we can to people who wish to make contact with us.
What am I missing here? Seven times in a time-frame of 22 years this priest was reported to to police and charges were never laid.
Why not? Was there lack of evidence? Was the witness not deemed credible? Why no charges agains a priest who has had sex abuse allegations reported to police no less than seven times?
As for the Missionaries of the Scared Heart, it seeems they dragged their heels before getting on with the request to have the priest laicized/defrocked.
As for the priest, well, it seems he was just doing as he jolly well pleased.
It’s not making sense. Seems to me the police have some answering to do. Why no charges?
A little more info on this article.
28 July 2011: Accused priest allowed to train youths
Dear Lord above help us! They let him serve as a guidance and careers counsellor!!!
If I was a survivor and was offered pastoral counselling I would request to know if the service offered is not from a recycled abuser, I would not put it past them.
Amen Michel. Prudence!
The reason police investigations go awry, at least in the U.K., is because Freemasons have monolithic control, having infiltrated all levels of law enforcement. I found this out from the son of a Scotland Yard detective 25 years ago. His father was being ostracized for (1) not being a Freemason; and (2) pointing out that this ‘fraternal organization’ had an unfortunate tendency to close ranks, protect the guilty in their midst, and compromise justice through associations with influential Freemasons in the community. It is well-known, I believe, that the Roman Catholic Church has also been infiltrated by Freemasons. Church safeguards against this have only relaxed in recent decades…. as everything else has ‘relaxed’.