Monthly Archives: January 2010

Clergy exposed in Murphy ‘must take responsibility’

Posted by on 30/01/2010 17 comments

The Irish Times – Saturday, January 30, 2010

SIMON CARSWELL in Davos, Switzerland

THE ARCHBISHOP of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has said the Catholic clergy and others associated with the cover-up of clerical child sex abuse, as exposed in the Murphy report, must accept general responsibility for their failure to protect children.

Dr Martin was responding to criticism of him by the former Dublin auxiliary bishop, Dr Dermot O’Mahony, who claimed in letters published this week that the archbishop had failed to support priests in the Dublin diocese following the publication of the report.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Dr Martin said that Dr O’Mahony had, like many others, not accepted accountability for the failings outlined in the report and that he “perpetuates this mistake by misquoting the report” in his correspondence.

“All I would like to see is people accept accountability and say, ‘look this is what happened’. In that letter, there is a certain rejection of what happened – that this horrendous scandal and the cover- up never took place. This I don’t accept,” said Dr Martin.

Dr O’Mahony said suggestions that the clergy failed to take cognisance of the safety of children was “inaccurate and unjust”. He said that “the acceptance by the media and current diocese policy that a cover-up took place must be challenged” in letters circulated to the council of priests.

People didn’t want to admit that “we got it remarkably wrong”, said Dr Martin, but this conclusion was justified and wider accountability must be accepted.

“People can criticise me but I believe that, for me, the reaction to the Murphy report must be predominant – something horrendous happened on our watch and we got it spectacularly wrong.”

Dr O’Mahony criticised Dr Martin for being out of the Dublin diocese for 31 years and having “no idea” of the trauma of dealing with sex abuse allegations without protocols or guidelines.

“Nobody knows where they would have been,” said Dr Martin. “However, it is again a case of blame everybody else, saying: ‘Where were you, what would you have done?’ ”

Dr Martin said that it was “not easy” to determine where accountability lay, but it was wrong to deny general accountability and to blame “some impersonal systems failure”.

The pope’s decision to call the bishops to a meeting in Rome next month was “a sign of his concern” and “an unusual thing”, Dr Martin added. “I am glad it is taking place.”

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Bishop O’Mahony accused of questioning validity of Murphy report

Posted by on 29/01/2010 13 comments

By Claire O’Sullivan

Friday, January 29, 2010

VICTIMS support groups and clerical sex abuse victims have accused former Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Dermot O’Mahony of questioning the validity of the Murphy report and said that if this attitude is widespread within the Church, it will never be a safe place for children.

One in Four chief executive Maeve Lewis said she found it “unthinkable” that a senior member of the clergy in the Dublin archdiocese could adopt such a stance.

Correspondence between Bishop O’Mahony and the Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was published in the Irish Catholic yesterday. The letters reveal strong anger on the behalf of retired auxiliary bishop, Dermot O’Mahony, over Archbishop Martin’s ready acceptance of the Murphy Commission’s conclusion that a culture of cover-up dogged the archdiocese’s handling of abuse complaints.

“It is incontrovertible from evidence given to the Murphy Commission and from the histories of clients attending One in Four that the archdiocese was guilty of the reckless endangerment of children, many of whose lives have been racked with pain and suffering as a result,” she said.

“It may be that Bishop O’Mahony is articulating the views held privately by other priests, bishops and members of the laity. It is this culture of denial which facilitated the sexual abuse of children in the first place. If this response to the Murphy report is widespread, then the Catholic Church will never be a safe place for children.”

Former abuse victim, Andrew Madden said he was greatly disappointed at Bishop O’Mahony’s denial of events: “Bishop O’Mahony would do well to spend some time reflecting on the damage done to so many children by what he did, and what he failed to do, instead of criticising Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for correctly accepting the findings of the Murphy Report in full.”

Mr Madden described the commission of investigation’s findings in relation to Bishop O’Mahony as “shocking”.

The commission of investigation found that the former auxiliary bishop failed to tell Archbishop Ryan about complaints and that he gave a character reference to Fr Vidal when he moved to the US, even though he had been the subject of several complaints.

He also failed to tell the National Rehabilitation Hospital, archdiocesan authorities or the Gardaí that Fr Reynolds, who was chaplain to the hospital at the time, “might have a problem with child sexual abuse”.

The commission also said Bishop O’Mahony gave a character reference on behalf of Fr Tyrus despite being aware that he had had a relationship with a 17-year-old girl when he was a teacher. The character reference was for a job where he would work with children.

Abuse victims propose that funds for monument go to Haiti survivors

Posted by on 25/01/2010 47 comments

ThePost.ie

24 January 2010 By John Burke and Emma Kennedy

Survivors of institutional child abuse want €500,000 – which has been earmarked for a monument to victims – to be given to survivors of the Haiti earthquake.

The proposal was made to Taoiseach Brian Cowen in a meeting last Friday with two of the main groups representing victims. Michael O’Brien of Right of Place, who met Cowen in Clonmel, said that the direct aid gesture would ‘‘genuinely mean more to victims of clerical abuse than a piece of stone on O’Connell Street’’.

The erection of a monument to survivors of abuse was one of the proposals in the Ryan Report into the abuse of children in state-run institutions.

The government established a committee last October to consider the location and nature of the memorial, which was to include the 1999 apology to abuse victims by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

Cowen told the groups that the government would consider the proposal.

If it is accepted, it would raise the national contribution to Haitian aid to €22.5 million.

The government last week also sent an 80-tonne consignment of supplies to Haiti.

As well as the official state contribution, Irish charities have raised millions of euro for Haiti, with contributions from businesses and members of the public.

The United Nations has appealed for more than €400million to fund the enormous relief operation under way in Haiti, where millions of people are homeless.

Redress Board spends €900.000 on travel, hotels.

Posted by on 24/01/2010 8 comments

Ken Foxe. Sunday Tribune 24 January 2009

A BOARD set up to adjudicate on claims by victims of abuse in industrial schools and other institutions has spent more than €900,000 on travel, hotel bills, taxi fares and courier costs.

The average award from the Residential Institutions Redress Board is €63.210 with some former residents getting just a few thousand euros in damages.

By the time all 13,743 cases are dealt with by the board, it is expected the final bill to the taxpayer will come to €1.1bn.

According to a breakdown of costs from the Redress Board Board, more than €622.000 has been spent of “travel and subsistence” since its inception.

Further hotel room hire costs of €131,692 have also been recorded, while taxi and courier services have set the taxpayer back €187,568.

Fees for board members have cost a massive €8.59m according to accounts from the Redress Board, whilst administrative salaries have come to €8.63m.

The cost of an advertising campaign to ensure all victims came forward was €899.367, and even postage ended up costing more than €500.000.

Vending machine and water supplies at the Redress Board headquarters cost €67,538, according to the details released by the Department of Education.


“The €900.000 spend is a disgrace given the paltry sums paid to people who were abused,” said Paddy Doyle, a survivor of one of the institutions.

“People would do well to bear in mind that the average payment made by the Redress Board to survivors no stands at around €67.000. Much of that €900.000 could have been used to ensure real redress rather than pocket money.

“Bertie Ahern said payments made by the Redress Board would be in line would be in line with those people who took ‘abuse cases’ to the court…the payments made to people who have gone to the civil courts is about €350.000.”

The department said it expected that the final bill would now exceed the 1bn originally estimated.

“The total paid in Redress Board awards from inception to the end of November is €800,749,870. The total third-party legal costs associated with these awards, and including the costs for those applicants who took High Court actions, is €148,506,089,” the department said in a statement.

“At this point, overall anticipated expenditure associated with the Redress Board is expected to be up to €1.1bn. This estimate is tentative given that the board is still in the process of making awards and the level of awards in these remain cases may vary substantially.”

The average claim hovers around €62,000; just 29 people have been awarded more than €200,000, and the maximum payment to one individual was €300,000.

More than a third of people who were compensated for their time in industrial schools and other institutions were given less than €50,000.

A total of 814 applications were refused or withdrawn, or resulted in no award where the claimants’ stories appeared not to stack up or did not relate to the right institutions.

1,000.00 EUR = £877.599 Pounds sterling.
1,000.00 EUR = $1,413.90 USD

Questions over funding of legal action against abuse survivors

Posted by on 21/01/2010 16 comments

By Jennifer Hough

CONCERNS have been raised over how a High Court action – brought against his own members by the head of a group for survivors of institutional abuse – is being funded.

Last November, Noel Barry of Cork-based charity, Right of Place, took out an injunction against a new committee seeking to take over the running of the organisation. The case has been adjourned three times since.

Patrick Walsh, British spokesman for the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA), said any money given to Right of Place to help victims of abuse should not be used to fund an action over an internal dispute.

Mr Walsh said he was very interested to know how the legal action was being paid for.

“Any money that this organisation has received for charitable endeavour should not be used in the High Court,” he said. “That money which is supposed to help members of the group could be used against them is an obscenity.”

It is understood the HSE has instructed Right of Place management that funding provided by it is not to be used to support the legal action, and that it will be monitoring the situation.

Right of Place is being asked to urgently furnish the HSE with details of the group’s structure and finance, including the number of bank accounts within the organisation, how petty cash is managed and details of the number of clients who attended meetings or were referred for counselling.
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Church blames Devil-inspired children over sex abuse

Posted by on 19/01/2010 33 comments

Tue, Jan 19, 2010

RITE AND REASON: “Paul”, who suffered clerical sex abuse, explains why he believes the Catholic Church has failed properly to deal with the problem in its midst.

I AM writing because I know why the church hid the abusers and is still evasive about blaming the perpetrators and the people who hid them.

Naturally I am a victim, so I am limited by the anger I feel, but also it seems I am unique in remembering the most important aspect of it all, the aspect that explains everything.

My priest (abuser) has the distinction of being the highest placed individual that I am aware of as having been accused. He is dead many years.

I want to remain anonymous because I do not want a label attached to myself. Understand, I am not shamed in any way, but that is not who I am and I don’t want all my actions or inactions explained away with reference to the abuse I experienced.

The reason why the church covered up the abuse and moved priests about is because they did not blame the priests, they blamed the children. With this knowledge observe the reaction of church authorities. They
look as if they would like to say it, but can’t.

And that is it. They can’t because they believe society is now over-sentimental about children and they would not be understood. This was confirmed to me when I met an old priest tucked away in a nursing
home despite the fact he was not unwell.

At one point he suggested Cardinal Ó Fiaich should be canonised, I rejected the idea, pointing out he was involved in the cover-up of abuse.

The old priest said: “People should forgive him, after all we are prepared to forgive the children.” I asked: “Forgive the children what?”
He replied: “Their share of the blame.” Of course in that moment I realised he was himself an abuser, hidden away there.

In my own case the priest treated the abuse as punishment for some contrived wrongdoing by me. Afterwards he would recoil, claiming that I was the cause of it and he was merely a weak sinner who had been tempted by me.

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Madden leaves Church over failure of bishops to resign

Posted by on 19/01/2010 11 comments

The Irish Times – Monday, January 18, 2010

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

THE FIRST person in Ireland to have gone public – in 1995 – about his abuse by a Catholic priest has formally left the Catholic Church.

Andrew Madden, who was abused when an altar boy in Cabra parish in Dublin by Ivan Payne, wrote to the Dublin archdiocese before Christmas saying he wished to leave the Church. He received notice of his “cessation of church membership by formal act of defection. . .” from church authorities last week.

He also received a letter, dated January 11th, from Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin expressing sadness at the decision to leave and saying it made him wonder whether the church could learn from it.

In a response to Archbishop Martin at the weekend, Mr Madden said that following publication of the Murphy report, he was “appalled, as I believe you may have been, by the behaviour of your fellow bishops as they did everything to try and hold onto office, four of them failing”.

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Sex abuse hurt me deeply, says actor Byrne

Posted by on 18/01/2010 3 comments

By Lynne Kelleher
Monday January 18 2010

HOLLYWOOD star Gabriel Byrne has revealed how he was “deeply hurt” by sexual abuse inflicted on him as a child by the Christian Brothers.

The film star opened up about the abuse in the first show of Gay Byrne’s ‘Meaning of Life’ series on RTE television last night.

The actor talked frankly about his battles with alcoholism and depression in the past and expressed shock at the drinking culture among Ireland’s young people.

Byrne was an altar boy during his childhood in Dublin and went at the age of 11 to train as a priest in England.

“Unfortunately, I experienced some sexual abuse. It was a known and admitted fact of life amongst us that there was this particular man and you didn’t want to be left in the dressing room with him,” he said.

“It took many years to come to terms with it and to forgive those incidents that I felt had deeply hurt me.”

Another priest sexually abused him when he was 11 at the English seminary.

“It didn’t go on over a prolonged period but it happened at a very, very vulnerable moment,” Byrne recalled.

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Gardai step up probe into abuse collusion

Posted by on 17/01/2010 2 comments

By MAEVE SHEEHAN
The Sunday Independent, Sunday January 17 2010

GARDAI (Irish Police) have stepped up an investigation into whether members of the
force or the clergy broke the law in protecting child sexual abusers.

A dedicated team of detectives working under an assistant garda
commissioner, John O’Mahony, is preparing to interview up to
half-a-dozen members of the force whose actions were criticised in Judge
Yvonne Murphy’s report on child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese. It is
understood that some individuals have already been interviewed but it is
not clear whether these are priests or former members of the force.

The report is not only focusing on gardai but also on the actions of
priests and clergy to see if there is evidence that they failed to act
in relation to a criminal act.

Those who are expected to be interviewed include the retired Cardinal
Desmond Connell and the retired chief superintendents Maurice O’Connor
and Joe McGovern. There have already been calls from victims groups that
Cardinal Connell be prosecuted.

Mr O’Connor was criticised in the report for having “inappropriate
dealings” with Bishop James Kavanagh, at a time when the paedophile Fr
Bill Carney, was investigated for indecent assault. The report found
that Bishop Kavanagh tried to influence the investigation but was
unsuccessful. Fr Carney was convicted because “lower-ranking gardai had
done their job properly”. The report said Chief Superintendent O’Connor
could not take credit for that.

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President tells envoys child abuse affects us all

Posted by on 17/01/2010 1 comment

PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

“THE PROBLEMS addressed by the Ryan and Murphy reports, as well as the vulnerability of children to abuse in the home, are peculiar neither to Ireland nor to the Catholic Church,” President McAleese said yesterday.

In a seeming retort to comments by Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, in the Vatican earlier this week, President McAleese said: “These are global problems and to assume otherwise is to offer abusers the same dishonourable secret veil which gave them protection and immunity for far too long.

“I hope the world’s children will benefit from the greater scepticism and vigilance that our experience rightly demands in order to better protect our children.”

She was speaking at Áras an Uachtaráin to members of the diplomatic corps at the annual presentation of new year greetings.

Before she spoke, the papal nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, dean of the diplomatic corps, conveyed “sincerest greetings” to the President in a brief address on behalf of his fellow diplomats.

Earlier this week Cardinal Hummes, a Brazilian, said clerical sex abuse scandals in Ireland were not representative of the behaviour of the vast majority of priests in the Catholic Church.

During an interview last Wednesday in the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano , he said it would be wrong to “make generalisations” as a result of the Irish experience.

“The painful Irish happenings – which by the way have seen some bishops assume their responsibilities and resign – simply do not relate to the entire episcopal ministry. The bishops are good fathers for their priests,” he said.

He continued: “Certainly, there are some unbecoming situations but they are very limited in number. Unfortunately, we are talking about situations linked to the human condition. And that’s what happened in Ireland.”

Asked whether, in his view, the credibility of priests worldwide has been undermined by such scandals, he said: “Unfortunately, in a society that has little inclination to dig deep in its search for the truth, [such scandals] damage the image of the priest. Above all because the media concentrate on these events rather than on all the good that is done by the vast majority of priests.”

In a wide-ranging address yesterday President McAleese spoke of the lessons learned about “the utter vulnerability of children in the absence of stringent vigilance and accountability of those charged with their care. Irish State authorities and Catholic Church authorities were found seriously wanting and innocent children were hurt as a consequence”.

“Thanks to victims and their advocates, we have been able to offer redress and reassurance that child protection is a high priority, infinitely more important than the status of any institution or individual, and that child abuse is, as it has always been, a heinous crime – but today it is a crime that will be pursued, not suppressed. These matters rightly absorb us in Ireland . . .” she said.

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