Dec
31
The Irish Times – Thursday, December 31, 2009
DAVID ADAMS
The litany of abuse was horrifying, as was how far the church went to cover up crimes and protect perpetrators
BY ANY reckoning, 2009 has not been a good year, North or South.
In Northern Ireland, it seemed at times as though the bad old days were rising up again like a malign spectre to mock our optimism and complacency.
Dissident republicans murdered two soldiers and a police officer, actively targeted other security personnel, issued a range of death threats, and carried out numerous “punishment” shootings and beatings. Failed bomb attacks and hoax warnings periodically disrupted towns, villages and city centres, along with the everyday lives of hapless commuters and resident communities. There was a weary dawning that the dissidents are more than just a minor irritant; they pose a real and growing security threat.
Constant bickering and jockeying for supremacy signalled an end to the DUP and Sinn Féin honeymoon period – such as it ever was – and awakened us to still another harsh reality: we can’t take the political process for granted either.
Racist and sometimes murderous sectarian attacks; the recession and consequent job losses; general economic insecurity and necessary belt-tightening: it all made for a bleak year in the North.
Aside from security concerns, the Republic had it even worse. The naked greed and ineptitude of a once cosy cabal of bankers, property speculators and politicians finally killed off the Celtic Tiger and brought the Southern economy to its knees.
Resulting in hard recessionary times, with talk of youngsters having to emigrate to earn a living, reminiscent again of a dark dreary past thought to have been consigned forever to the dustbin of history. When the “Hand of Henry” ruined the Republic’s chance of a place at the World Cup finals, it seemed perversely fitting to an already demoralised and dispirited people.
Dec
31
Magdalene girl: ‘I cried for weeks and weeks. I was nobody. I was 16’
Filed Under Personal Stories/Opinions | 11 Comments
Thursday, December 31, 2009 – Irish Examiner.
CLAIMING that the new “information wasn’t available” when he rejected a distinct redress scheme for Magdalene survivors, Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe’s response rings hollow (Irish Examiner, December 17). It is important, moreover, to emphasise that evidence of state complicity rests not only with the materials laid before the Department of Justice on December 14.
Indeed, the Department of Education must also acknowledge its own complicity in this matter.
Had officials from the department attended the scheduled meeting with Justice for Magdalenes (JFM), I would have pointed to the department’s awareness of children being placed in Magdalene laundries as late as 1970 (beyond those transferred from state residential institutions).
This awareness never led to direct corrective action or intervention. Indeed it is still unacknowledged. As such, it calls into question the department’s commitment to “cherish all of the children of the nation equally”.
The Reformatory and Industrial School Systems Report 1970 (ie, the Kennedy Report), commissioned by the Department of Education, documents two distinct populations of children so confined. In a discussion of children placed in “religious convents” by “parents, relatives, social workers, welfare officers, clergy or garda”, the report states that “the committee is satisfied that there are at least 70 girls between the ages of 13 and 19 confined in this way who should properly be dealt with under the reformatory schools’ system”.
Likewise, in a table attempting to capture the “total number of children in care”, the report asserts that there were 617 children resident in “voluntary homes which have not applied for approval”. As the department can affirm, these “voluntary homes” were typically Magdalene laundries and other “religious convents”.
The report’s two figures – 70 and 617 – offer a snapshot for the scale of the problem in 1968/’69. My questions to the officials from the Department of Education, again if they had attended, would have been the following:
1. Given the department’s awareness, and the moral and constitutional obligations to protect children and provide a basic minimum education, can the minister now account for each of these children?
2. Given its awareness that children were being “cared” for in these institutions, did the department ever visit, inspect or license these “religious homes”?
I ask these two questions in light of the Ryan report offering a window into what life was like for children transferred to the laundries from a residential institution.
We are told the regime was “like a prison”, that doors were locked all the time … working conditions were harsh, “constantly washing laundry in cold water and using heavy irons for many hours”. One survivor remembers her child labour: “I did collars; you had to keep ironing them until they became real stiff. There was a little wooden thing you could stand on.”
Dec
31
The Irish Times – Wednesday, December 30, 2009
PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent
THE AUGUSTINIAN priest who walked in atonement from Cobh to Dublin for clerical child sex abuse victims a year ago says the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan “must have known something” about the the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in Dublin while there as auxiliary bishop between 1997 and 2005.
Beginning his walk on December 29th last year, Fr Michael Mernagh said he believed the Bishop of Cloyne Dr John Magee should step down after it emerged weeks earlier that child-protection measures in the diocese were “inadequate, even dangerous.”
This was revealed in a report by a Catholic agency, the National Board for Safeguarding Children.
Since then Dr Magee has stood down from governance in the diocese, which is currently being investigated by the Murphy commission.
Fr Mernagh maintained a three- day vigil outside St Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh, seat of Dr Magee, over Christmas 2008 in protest at the revelations.
He ended his 300km walk at Dublin’s Pro Cathedral on January 6th last, where he was applauded by a waiting crowd and embraced by Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin.
Dec
29
Bishop Drennan, it’s time to fall on your crozier and quit
Filed Under Dublin Diocesan Report - Child Abuse. | 1 Comment
By JOHN COONEY
Tuesday December 29 2009
AT a Mass in Dublin’s St Michan’s Church marking the opening of the law term, in October 2000, a Catholic bishop ascended the high moral ground in his sermon to the legal and judicial luminaries when he lambasted the British media tactic of “naming and shaming” convicted offenders.
This lamentable practice “has had frightening consequences”, intoned the bishop to an audience which would have included Frank ‘Ferns’ Murphy, Sean ‘Industrial schools’ Ryan and Yvonne ‘Dublin’ Murphy, all three shortly to become immortalised for “naming and shaming” archbishops, auxiliary bishops and religious superiors who covered up heinous crimes against innocent children by paedophile priests.
That day’s preacher-bishop was an Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Dr Martin Drennan, who nine years later as Bishop of Galway was named in the archdiocese of Dublin report but remains unashamed and unmoved by the appeals of victims Andrew Madden and Marie Collins to step down.
The Kilkenny-born bishop has gone into hiding leaving behind his spokesman to say that he did no wrong and that he was not criticised by Judge Yvonne Murphy for referring for treatment a priest, named as ‘Father Guido’, who had a passion for taking photographs of naked adolescents, especially rugby players.
Not mentioned by the Galway spokesman is that further investigation by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin led to this cleric’s departure from the priesthood. The fact that Archbishop Martin included Bishop Drennan in his call for examination of consciences speaks volumes.
Before leaving his mansion on Galway’s plush Taylor’s Hill, Bishop Drennan had ample time to take to heart the words in the resignation statement of the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Jim Moriarty, that “from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture” of cover-ups prevailing in the archdiocese of Dublin from January 1, 1975 to April 30, 2004.
Where and when during his eight-year stint in Dublin from 1997 to 2005 is Bishop Drennan on the public record as speaking out to challenge that system of cover-up which was embedded under the equivocating authority of Cardinal Desmond Connell? Please supply chapter and verse, Bishop Drennan, if your conscience is as undisturbed as you claim.
Dec
29
Bishop Drennan has questions to answer on case of Noel Reynolds
Filed Under Dublin Diocesan Report - Child Abuse. | 1 Comment
The Irish Times – Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Martin Drennan was auxiliary bishop in Dublin when one of the worst abuse cases came to light. Did he know about it? If so, what did he do, asks PATSY McGARRY
ALLEGATIONS OF serious sexual abuse against a priest were brought to the attention of Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese by two sisters in 1998 during Bishop Martin Drennan’s tenure as auxiliary bishop there. The bishop was ordained auxiliary on September 21st, 1997, and remained in Dublin until installed as Bishop of Galway on July 3rd, 2005.
The sisters, called “Martha” and “Mary” here to protect their identities, spoke to this reporter in June 2003. In February 1998, their mother went to the chancellor of the archdiocese, Msgr John Dolan, to report the abuse of one of her daughters by Fr Noel Reynolds 20 years previously when he was based in Kilmore Road parish in Dublin’s north city.
He was curate there from 1969 to 1978. She did not name him, nor was she asked to. She was told that, as her daughter was an adult, then it was she who would have to make the complaint. The mother was pessimistic about this happening due to the circumstances of her daughter’s life. Nothing was done.
Later in 1998, a nun who was a social worker at a drug treatment centre contacted Mgr Dolan to say a woman being treated there alleged she had been abused by Fr Reynolds when she was nine. The nun named the priest.
She also expressed concern about Fr Reynolds being chaplain then at the National Rehabilitation Institute, where there were children. Cardinal Connell was told of this in May 1998. Fr Reynolds was removed from the National Rehabilitation Institute in July 1998. The hospital was not told why.
Fr Reynolds had been appointed to the institute in July 1997.
In May 1997, two months before Fr Reynolds’s appointment at the institute, church authorities in Dublin were told by Dr Patrick Walsh of the Granada Institute that Fr Reynolds “should not be involved in non-structured or informal interactions with children . . .” There were 94 patients under 18 while he was at the institute.
(The Murphy report said Fr Reynolds admitted in March 1996 to then chancellor Msgr Alex Stenson that he was sexually attracted to children.)
Dec
29
Abuse group calls for prelate to do ‘honourable thing’
Filed Under Dublin Diocesan Report - Child Abuse. | 5 Comments
The Irish Times – Tuesday, December 29, 2009
PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent
THE “HONOURABLE thing for the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan to do is to resign,” Maeve Lewis, chief executive with the One in Four group, has said.
Calls have been made for the bishop’s resignation also through newly-launched online and Facebook petitions.
Ms Lewis said that the bishop “has to take collective responsibility”.
She asked: “How many children were abused in Dublin between 1997 and 2005 when he was in a position of authority?”
She said:
“It will be immeasurably damaging to both survivors and the Catholic Church if this process is dragged out indefinitely. We call on all concerned to provide real moral leadership by finding the courage to acknowledge responsibility for their actions and inactions and to resign immediately.”
At this Christmas time, she called on “members of the Catholic Church to stand up for the survivors of clerical abuse and to find ways, either individually or as congregations, to convey your feelings to the leadership of the church”. Reflecting on 2009, she described it as “a terrible year for Ireland.
The Ryan report and the Murphy report have revealed a horrifying world where vulnerable children were tortured and abused. The children were not invisible, but many people stood aside and failed to intervene.
Dec
28
Time to atone for the sins of the fathers
Filed Under Child Abuse | 7 Comments
The Irish Times – Monday, December 28, 2009
CHURCH SCANDALS: This was the year when the Catholic Church was finally forced to account for its actions, in the face of two horrific reports, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE
COMING IN TO 2009, the Catholic Church and the Government knew at some level that this would be the year of truth. The Ryan commission on child abuse in church-run industrial schools and the Murphy commission on the cover-up of thousands of assaults on children by priests in the Dublin diocese had been sitting for some years.
The broad reality of the industrial-school system had already been detailed by survivors and, more clinically, by Eoin O’Sullivan and Mary Raftery in their book Suffer the Little Children . The system of cover-up that enabled clerical paedophiles to carry on with impunity had been previewed in the report on the Ferns diocese. Indeed, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin explicitly warned the faithful that the Murphy report would “shock us all”.
Given that the essence of the two reports was already known, and that the church and State authorities had so much time to prepare their responses, two obvious questions arise. Why did those reports indeed “shock us all”? And why did the authorities flounder for even a vaguely adequate response?
Part of the answer to the first question lies in the propensity for Irish culture to have “unknown knowns” – things that are known to be true but are treated as if they are outlandish fictions. No honest person seriously doubted that the industrial schools were instruments of terror and torture – why, otherwise, were children threatened with Letterfrack and Daingean, words that induced a numbing chill of fear? Likewise, many of the abusive priests were not secretive but behaved, on the contrary, with a flagrant and swaggering arrogance.
Yet, as dramatists have understood since the time of the ancient Greeks, there is often much more power in being forced to confront what you already know than in being amazed by the unexpected. And here, the language of both the Ryan and Murphy reports played a crucial role.
In both cases, the reports were written with a cold, clinical, relentless and above all unequivocal clarity. There were no qualifications, no escape hatches, no grounds for the “yes, but . . . ” or “what about . . . ?” that had been the constant refuge of the religious orders, the hierarchy and their apologists in the media. The lies, evasions and equivocations had to stop.
Dec
28
Bishop’s life out of touch with reality
Filed Under Dublin Diocesan Report - Child Abuse. | 6 Comments
The Irish Times – Monday, December 28, 2009
OPINION: Martin Drennan is the last bishop standing of all those who served in Dublin during the intensive cover-up of clerical child sex abuse, writes MARY RAFTERY
THE STRONGEST impression one gets of Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan these days is of someone who has lived a life blissfully disconnected from reality.
He, of course, is the last bishop standing of all those who served in Dublin during the period of intensive cover-up of clerical child sexual abuse discovered by the Murphy commission.
The bishop believes himself to be different from all the others mentioned in the report, as he alone was not asked to give evidence to the commission. This he appears to equate to some form of vindication.
He has further stated on radio that he believes that as his appointment as bishop in 1997 post-dates the watershed publication of guidelines on clerical child abuse cases, known variously as the “1996 Framework Document” or the “Green Book”, his time in Dublin was entirely blameless.
In this context, Bishop Drennan stated last week that “in 1995 the Dublin diocese decided on a policy of reporting all allegations to the Gardaí”. He added that from 1996 onwards “all allegations were reported to the HSE and the Gardaí.” This is an extraordinary statement. For example, we know from the Murphy report that in 1995, the names of “at least 12 priests” against whom complaints of child abuse had been made were withheld from the Garda by the Dublin archdiocese. At that time, Archbishop Desmond Connell provided the Garda with details of only 17 of the priests against whom complaints had been made.
Dec
24
Resignation statement puts pressure on other bishops
Filed Under Dublin Diocesan Report - Child Abuse. | 2 Comments
The Irish Times – Thursday, December 24, 2009
“The welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages. 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.”
ANALYSIS: A drip, drip of episcopal resignations is adding to the difficulties for survivors of abuse and for the Catholic faithful, writes PATSY McGARRY
ONE TELLING line in Bishop Jim Moriarty’s statement yesterday will have made it extraordinarily difficult for fellow bishops and others mentioned in the Murphy report to stay on in office.
He said: “I accept that, from the time I became an auxiliary bishop, I should have challenged the prevailing culture.” It is the kernel of the issue where all in positions of authority in the archdiocese between January 1st, 1975 and April 30th, 2004 are concerned.
Bishops Éamonn Walsh, Ray Field and Martin Drennan must by now have reached the same conclusion as Bishop Jim Moriarty and Bishop Donal Murray.
While serving as auxiliary bishops in Dublin over the almost 30-year period investigated by the Murphy commission, they should have challenged the prevailing culture of cover-up in the archdiocese where clerical child sex abuse was concerned. They did not.
But Bishop Moriarty went further yesterday. He said: “The Murphy report covers far more than what individual bishops did or did not do. Fundamentally it is about how the leadership of the archdiocese failed over many decades to respond properly to criminal acts against children.”
He could hardly have stated it more clearly or accurately. And while, like the four other serving bishops and others named in the Murphy report, it took him some time to arrive at that point, his action yesterday was not without grace. “I hope it honours the truth that the survivors have so bravely uncovered and opens the way to a better future for all concerned,” he said.
It was a noble sentiment and a welcome acknowledgment of and tribute to the people at the very centre of this calamity – the brave men and women who persisted through years of pain, personal trauma and widespread disbelief to bring out their awful truth.
It serves no one that this agony be prolonged. A drip, drip of episcopal resignations piles on the pressure for survivors, for the Catholic faithful, for fellow bishops and priests, and for the church itself.
Ideally, all men in positions of authority in the church mentioned in the Murphy report should have sorted out their consciences on the matter by the date of publication, November 26th last, and resigned en masse then. At the least, they would have retained some dignity by doing so. They also had the time to arrive at the state of mind which would have allowed them stand down then.
Dec
23
THE AUTHOR of this article, a victim of clerical sex abuse, wrote to the Editor seeking to ask questions of the people of Ireland. In the course of her letter to the Editor, she explained why she wished to remain anonymous, something not allowed on the Letters page.
The author explained her reasons thus:
“The reason I do not wish to give my address is simply that as a victim of clerical sexual abuse it has been very important for me to retain my privacy, having had it violated many years ago. There is no real right of privacy when, as a young person, you are interfered with, exposed in secrecy time and time again.
“For 25 years I lived with the fallout of my abuse, burying it deep within myself while it ate away, impacting on my ‘self’, my mental and physical wellbeing, my family life, my education, my relationship, and my future. When I came to find the strength to face it full on and deal with it in all aspects of my life, it was clear that I had to do the one thing that I had avoided for years: pay attention to myself, put myself centre stage, and work through the hell.
“From the time of my abuse I had projected myself into standing up for others’ rights, on an individual and collective basis, in Ireland and overseas. While this served others very well and at the time was good for me, it was clear when I was ready to face my own reality that the one thing I needed to do was pay full attention to myself, and not distract myself from this task by going public and getting involved with the ‘issue’.
“It was extremely important for this purpose that I keep my privacy; work my painful counselling through, week in, week out, to bring myself to a place that was good for me. This decision was hard for me to fulfil, it did not sit naturally with me and left me repeatedly feeling that I was letting others down, lacking courage to stand up and be counted.
“When I made my first step in approaching the church, they immediately violated my privacy, and this almost pushed me in to a deeper inner retreat than before. That experience taught me that in dealing with the abuse, to repair myself, I had to at all costs protect myself, circle the wagons, and trust no one outside a small circle who equally wanted to protect me.
“Every time I watched brave people like Marie Collins, Colm O’Gorman or Andrew Madden, I struggled within myself to take the step and speak out, knowing that I too could be articulate in challenging the hierarchy, the State and even use my journalist connections to push the agenda. But I stuck with what I needed to do, having for a decade put absolute energy into my counselling and all it unearthed.
“Finally I reached that powerful place of finding closure, and almost four decades later, to being alive.
“So why now do I want to speak out?
“Simply, I can’t stand any longer to watch the dishonesty, the inadequacy, the hypocrisy, and the mistruths being repeated time and time again, and good people like Marie Collins let down. I have asked myself the question: ‘What do I care now if people know my story, what does it matter?’
“But it does. Why should I have to expose myself when I was so wrongly exposed all those years ago? The experience of the abuse has impacted badly on my relationship with my family, contributed to the lack of trust in my own family; why should I have to do anything?
“Yet there are things as a victim, that everyone says they want to listen to, [that] I want to say to the population of Ireland, questions I want to ask, so that people at least listen and consider my views, my feelings in this whole matter.”
The identity of this writer is known to the Editor. The following is what she wanted to say to the people of Ireland:
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Links
A Consultation Proposal - Statutory Fund
A PROPOSAL FOR A MEMORIAL TO PEOPLE WHO WERE ABUSED?
ABUSE: Minutes of meeting with Taoiseach 15/04/2010
Archdiocese of Dublin Report
Child Abuse Links
- 'ANOTHER REPORT ON ANOTHER SHELF'
- Child Abuse Commission – Implementation Plan 28th July 2009
- Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse
- Ferns Report
- Lord Mayor’s Statement on abuse suffered by Children in Residential Institutions
- STATUTORY FUND: MINISTERS RESPONSE
- SURVIVORS AT LOGGERHEADS OVER DENIAL OF SEX ABUSE.
- SURVIVORS SPLIT AFTER MEETING.
- The Hypocrites: Der Spiegel on the Catholic Church and Sex
- VICTIMS IN DANGER OF LOSING SUPPORT
Disability Links
Dr Michael Corry
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