|
|
|
|
|
 Email+  Share+
Clerical abuse inquiry to criticise offenders’ protection
18 October 2009 By John Burke
The inquiry into clerical abuse in the Dublin archdiocese is to strongly condemn the practice of protecting clerics who were engaged in widespread child abuse.
The report will highlight issues during the reign of former archbishop Dermot Ryan, while also pointing to significant failures by Cardinal Desmond Connell and John Charles McQuaid. The commission of investigation report is expected to be released late this week or early next week.
One chapter will not be published after the High Court ruled it should be withheld in case it compromised extant criminal charges against a former Dublin priest.
The report is understood to be critical of senior figures in the archdiocese who assisted in moving around priests who were the subject of numerous complaints of sexual abuse; discrediting the complaints made by children and their families; and of mounting legal attacks on those who pursued the church formally for redress.
In some of the more serious cases, priests who were moved around following complaints of abuse were later placed in positions where they had specific responsibility for children; including unsupervised access to Catholic youth groups and altar boys.
One informed source said that the report would ‘‘highlight in very plain language the fact that the most persistent abuse occurred in Dublin city’s poorest areas, and that these were the areas where least was done to protect children’’.
Most of the abuse became public knowledge during Connell’s reign, which ended in 2004 when he was replaced by the current Archbishop, Diarmuid Martin.
The commission report will only name priests who fit its self-imposed criteria of being either ‘‘previously convicted in a public court and/or possessing a notorious reputation’’ which, in this case, will amount to 14 clerics.
No new names of abusive clerics will emerge from the long-awaited report as a result. It is understood that the vast majority of priests against whom the inquiry has found evidence of sustained and violent abuse are still alive and living in retirement.
|
|
|
