Yorkshire Post
Published on Sunday 12 June 2011 19:00
THE Roman Catholic Church has been bedevilled by allegations of child abuse in recent years and accusations it had failed to grasp the seriousness of the problem within its ranks.
After the scale of abuse in Ireland became clear with the publication of damning inquiry results in 2009, the leader of the church in England and Wales said those who perpetrated abuse should be held to account “no matter how long ago it happened”.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols said: “Every time there is a single incident of abuse in the Catholic Church, it is a scandal…I hope these things don’t happen again, but I hope they’re never a matter of indifference.”
Brother Ambrose O’Brien was sacked for abusing boys at the St William’s home, in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire, in 1965 but it appears it was there and then that accountability ended. Whether what happened afterwards was down to incompetence, indifference or worse will, probably, never be fully known.
That the police were not involved then is, perhaps, not surprising given different social attitudes towards abuse 40 or more years ago.
But that Ambrose O’Brien went on to become Father Joseph O’Brien, ordained by the same Middlesbrough Diocese which held the record of his dismissal, is, at the very least, surprising.
The dismissal of Brother Ambrose – the name he took at the time as a member of the De La Salle Brotherhood – was formally reported to the diocese, which had overall responsibility for the St William’s home through the Middlesbrough Diocesan Rescue Society.
But his application to the diocese to become a priest in 1972 was accepted, after De La Salle, the Catholic lay order which ran the home, failed to mention the dismissal when it was asked for a reference.
Consequently, Brother Ambrose O’Brien emerged as Father Joseph O’Brien in 1975, and went on to serve in Middlesbrough and then, through the 1980s and 1990s, in North Yorkshire.
Whether there were further allegations against him – or what they were – is unclear. In 2002 a former brother who worked at the home, Noel Hartnett, told Humberside Police, who were investigating wider abuse allegations at St William’s, that he had been approached by another priest who was compiling a dossier on Father O’Brien because there were further allegations of abuse. He also told detectives about Father O’Brien’s dismissal, which he had witnessed at first hand.
If Humberside Police had interviewed Father O’Brien in 2002, the full picture may have emerged then. Whether the diocese would have acted is not known, though by this point Father O’Brien had retired four years earlier in 1998. In the event, Father O’Brien was not interviewed and his history remained below the radar.
However, Father O’Brien’s history would have been difficult to ignore when his dismissal formed part of the evidence in an ongoing compensation case by former residents of St William’s over alleged wide-scale sexual and physical abuse at the home.
The report on the dismissal – disclosed by the diocese during the proceedings – was cited by Judge Hawkesworth QC in his High Court judgment in November 2009 that the diocese, rather than De La Salle, should be held responsible for the home.
Two months later, Father O’Brien died in his home city of Hull aged 87.
His dismissal for child abuse was not mentioned by the diocese when it publicly recorded his passing and gave details of his funeral Mass. It has never publicly acknowledged his history until now.
The Yorkshire Post approached Archbishop Nichols for his views on the story of Father O’Brien. He declined to comment.
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Exclusive: Scandal of boys’ home paedophile appointed as priest
Yorkshire Post
11 June 2011
Father Joseph O’Brien
A SENIOR staff member sacked from a Roman Catholic children’s home for sexually abusing boys went on to become a priest in the same diocese, the Yorkshire Post can reveal today. Father Joseph O’Brien, who served as a priest in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, for 15 years, had previously been dismissed for abusing a number of boys at the St William’s children’s home in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire.The case casts another shadow over the Roman Catholic Church, which has been the subject of a series of accusations that it harboured priests who abused children.It also poses questions for Humberside Police, which was made aware of Father O’Brien’s actions but did not interview or arrest him when his history was flagged up in a formal witness statement in 2002. Father O’Brien died in January last year.
He was sacked from his position as deputy principal at St William’s in 1965 and escorted from the building. At that time, Father O’Brien was a member of the De La Salle Brotherhood, a Catholic lay order which ran the home, and was known as Brother Ambrose O’Brien.
The dismissal was formally reported to the board of managers at the home, which was part of the Middlesbrough Diocese.
But in 1972, while still a member of the De La Salle Brotherhood, he asked the then Bishop of Middlesbrough, the late Bishop McClean, if he could train to become a priest.
The diocese has told the Yorkshire Post that the bishop sought a reference from De La Salle but was not told why Father O’Brien had been sacked from St William’s.
De La Salle has confirmed it did not in its reference say why the then Brother Ambrose O’Brien was sacked. But the brotherhood also pointed out the diocese held recorded evidence of the dismissal.
He was consequently able to train at Ushaw College in Durham and was ordained in 1975.
Father O’Brien went on to serve at churches in Middlesbrough before moving to North Yorkshire, and had a 15-year spell at All Saints in Thirsk, from where he retired in 1998.
When he died last year, aged 87, the diocese held a funeral Mass attended by the current bishop – Bishop Drainey – and 20 other priests.
The diocese published details of the Mass on its website, including the homily, but there was no reference to Father O’Brien’s dismissal from St William’s.
The Yorkshire Post can also reveal that Humberside Police, which has previously been censured by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) over failings in its investigation into St William’s, was told about Father O’Brien’s sacking, along with suggestions that he might have gone on to abuse other children while a priest.
A witness statement provided on January 23, 2002 by Noel Hartnett, who was himself the subject of investigation but cleared of any wrongdoing, directly identified Father O’Brien as a perpetrator. Mr Hartnett, a former Brother at the home, informed two detectives why Father O’Brien was sacked and told them that he himself was present when the home’s principal carried out the dismissal.
He also told them a priest in the diocese had approached him during the early 1990s for information on Father O’Brien because the priest had heard of allegations of more recent abuse. Mr Hartnett told police the priest said he was compiling a dossier to send to the bishop.
The priest, who has since retired and is into his 80s, denied the existence of any dossier when contacted by the Yorkshire Post.
He said he recalled receiving a letter which he had passed to the diocese which he said had subsequently been dealt with by the diocese’s solicitors.
He declined to say who the letter was from and declared, in Latin, he considered the matter “finished”.
The diocese denied it ever received a dossier and said it has no record of further allegations against Father O’Brien. It declined to comment on the letter the retired priest had forwarded.
A spokesman said “…if the De la Salle Provincial had informed Bishop McClean of Father O’Brien’s departure from St William’s and the reasons for it, Bishop McClean would have directed that the matter be investigated in the same way as any complaint made against a diocesan priest, or prospective diocesan priest, and would have given serious consideration to the outcome of that investigation when deciding whether or not to accept Father O’Brien for training for the priesthood.”
The diocese declined to comment when asked why it was not aware of the report made at the time of the sacking.
A De La Salle spokesman acknowledged that it could not explain why there was no reference to the dismissal in the reference provided to the Bishop. But he added that “the St William’s management committee which was part of the Middlesbrough Diocese was informed about the reasons for the departure of Joseph O’Brien”
Humberside Police said there was an ongoing inquiry into fresh allegations over St William’s.
Shades of Martin Houston, “the Devil of Grollier Hall.” Convicted. THEN ordained!
Note allegations that police failed to investigate after being informed of O’Brien’s past couled with allegations from a relaible source that he had abused after ordination.
“THE Roman Catholic Church has been bedevilled by allegations of child abuse in recent years and accusations it had failed to grasp the seriousness of the problem within its ranks.”
In my opinion the foregoing proposition has the bizarre effect of separating the r.c. church from it’s deeds which gives the appearance that the church is a victim . The reality is the church is plagued by the fact that the evil within has in recent years and continues to be exposed to the world , never mind the term “allegations,” it can be insulting to many real victims and it serves to water down the REALITY.
To say that these MEN “failed to grasp the seriousness of the problem” simply excuses them on grounds of ignorance. I believe firmly and without any doubt that these men understood/understand fully the seriousness of sexual assault and cover up but they chose/choose freely to act in defiance of any virtue and of secular law. There aren’t many if any priests and never has there been a pope who was intellectually disabled – the only condition which could render anyone not capable of grasping the seriousness of such evil conduct.