The Catholic hierarchy in Ireland was granted immunity to cover up child sex abuse among paedophile priests in Dublin, a damning report revealed today.

Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs.

Hundreds of crimes against defenceless children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while gardaí treated clergy as though they were above the law.

In a three-year inquiry, the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese uncovered a sickening tactic of “don’t ask, don’t tell” throughout the Church.

“The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities,” it said.

“The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.

“The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes.”

Four archbishops – John Charles McQuaid who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell – did not hand over information on abusers.

The first files were handed over by the Cardinal in 1995 but even then he had records of complaints against at least 28 priests.

The primary loyalty of bishops and archbishops is to the Church, the report said.

Bishop James Kavanagh, Bishop Dermot O’Mahony, Bishop Laurence Forristal, Bishop Donal Murray and disgraced Bishop Brendan Comiskey, a reformed alcoholic who failed to control paedophile priests when in charge of the Ferns Diocese, all knew about child abuse for many years.

The inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said the hierarchy cannot claim they did not know that child sex abuse was a crime.

Cardinal Connell was credited for instigating two secret canon law trials which took place over the 30-year period and led to two priests being defrocked.

Monsignor Gerard Sheehy, a powerful figure in the Catholic Archdiocese, one of the largest in Europe, fought to prevent the internal prosecutions.

Religious orders, for example the Columbans, had clear knowledge of complaints dating back to the early 1970s.

Parts of the 700-page report have been censored to prevent pending or potential prosecutions of abusers being prejudiced with references to two priests, and one of the cleric’s brothers, removed.

While the Dublin Archdiocese inquiry found no evidence of a paedophile ring, some of the most shocking findings included:

:: One priest admitted sexually abusing more than 100 children;

:: Another accepted he abused on a fortnightly basis during his 25-year ministry;

:: One complaint was made against a priest who later admitted abusing at least six other children;

:: It took gardaí 20 years to decide on a prosecution of one priest.

The inquiry said it uncovered inappropriate contacts between authorities and the Archdiocese.

Allegations were made against one priest, known as Fr Edmondus, but Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan handed the case to Archbishop McQuaid and took no other action.

The inquiry also warned of inappropriate relations between some senior gardaí and priests in two other cases.

“A number of very senior members of the gardaí, including the Commissioner (Costigan) in 1960, clearly regarded priests as being outside their remit,” the report said.

“There are some examples of gardaí actually reporting complaints to the Archdiocese instead of investigating them.

“It is fortunate that some junior members of the force did not take the same view.”

The inquiry, which was looking at a sample of 46 priests dating back to 1975 but took its review back as far as the 1940s, outlined an insurance scheme for victims set up by the Archdiocese in 1987.

Church files show at the time Archbishops McNamara, Ryan and McQuaid had, between them, information on complaints against at least 17 priests.

The Commission said it proved the hierarchy knew the sex abuse scandals would cost the Church dearly.

“The taking out of insurance was proving knowledge of child sex abuse as a major cost to the Archdiocese and is inconsistent with the view that archdiocesan officials were still ’on a learning curve’ at a much later date, or were lacking in an appreciation of the phenomenon of clerical child sex abuse,” it said.

The Archdiocese was pre-occupied until the mid-1990s with maintaining secrecy, avoiding scandal, protecting the reputation of the Church and preservation of assets.

All other concerns, including the damage done to young victims, came second, the report said.

“The welfare of the children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early days,” the Commission said.

 

10 Responses to “Report: Church had immunity to conceal sex abuse 26/11/2009 – 14:16:26”

  1. Martha says:

    The comments here – apropos the most recent on the institutionalised abuse of Irish children, aka “Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin” – are very interesting, to say the least. Thank you all, and thank you Paddy Doyle for this website!

    I would just like to say that I had the misfortune to grow up in the Holy Catholic Ireland of the 1950’s and 1960’s which meant that my mother was (like the vast majority of mothers of that era) was a “brainwashed Roman Catholic”. That is to say, she really and truly believed that the Catholic Church, along with its Fianna Fail cohorts (we’ll leave the Fine Gael blueshirts aside for now) were her “Gods”.

    This meant that she, like all other psychologically-raped Irish mothers (along with most other Irish adults, both male and female) put the abnormal needs of the psychotic sociopaths who had control of our country, before the needs of her own biological offspring – and she was SO psychologically fucked-up she didn’t even know she was doing this.

    It wasn’t until I became an adult myself, at about the age of 36, that I realised just how psychologically damaged (emotionally retarded) my mother was. Being a mother myself at that stage did, of course, help me to gain insight (understand) my own mother… and therefore, forgive her – but that didn’t mean I felt obliged to take her under my wing. Au contraire, I parted company with her, as soon as I realised she was as mad as a hatter (pointed Red hats and all that sort of thing..)

    So, to those of you who tell me, in effect, to “get over” the fact that the Brits occupied our country (Ireland) for 800 years: all I have to say to you is: EVERY society has its Lowest Common Denominator element – the trick is, to not let THEM, i.e., our insane defectives, rule the rest of us. In other words, do not let Organised Religion (insanity) take control of us!

    Martha

  2. Raymond says:

    AT the height of Ireland’s clerical child sexual abuse scandals, American canon lawyer Fr Tom Doyle predicted the archdiocese of Dublin rated “at the top of the heap” on a world scale for its appalling quota of rapist offenders whose heinous crimes were blithely covered up by the church authorities…….
    The shameful reality is that since the foundation of the State in 1921 until very recently, the media, as well as the gardai, politicians, lawyers, doctors and members of the caring professions regarded the Church as a divine institution that was above and beyond the law…… (John Cooney)

    The Murphy report will query yet again the State’s failure to challenge vested interests and, at least, to insist on and enforce child protection guidelines.(**)
    Yet like Ryan, it falters at challenging the constitutional provisions on family that put children’s rights beneath the legal radar by failing to identify them as individuals.
    That is the legacy of Church-State collusion as influenced in 1937 by Eamon De Valera’s colleague, John Charles McQuaid.
    If children are to be really protected, it must be changed (Medb Ruane).

    These words were written 3 days before the Murphy report was released. They reflect my views perfectly, like very few other journalists seem to.

    (**) Mis-diagnosis and tragedies on trolleys do not inspite confidence in the HSE to carry out these duties – especially as they have failed in them already.

    But will it change, as it must? There’s a BATTLE going on, to bring about a referendum to change the Constitution. When the referendum comes – as it MUST – it will be a BIGGER BATTLE to convince us, adults and parents, to carry this vote.

    Or will the penny finally drop? Could THIS be the biggest reward and contribution from the testimonies of the Victims who make up the report? Will we be shamed and embarrassed enough to vote to Protect Children now, or can we at least “trust blindly” with the suffering of the Abused and believe them?

    Not 36 hours have gone by and the ink is still damp on the report that we have already found our scapegoats: the Gardai…. How convenient. And we hear that the good Catholics will know to “separate the current Issues, from their Faith, on Sundays…. “.
    Denial. Amnesia. Same words, in this Morally-Bankrupt Society of ours.

    But very few are the voices who DON’T BELIEVE A WORD THEY SAY. Hollow apologies that cannot even been told in your eyes, but have to be read! Where is the Unconditional Condemnation? Diarmuid Martin (Sir!) had rowed back on his shallow words, before the bell struck midnight! Even faster than Peter!

    The Princes of the Church behave exactly like our politicians, setting themselves up to save us, guide us through these difficult times, having brought us there themselves. Why can we not see, even less say, that the havoc caused by the floods of the West, the trillions frittered away and their Nama’s, the jobs lost, the families in dreadful financial struggles, are all one and the same and come from the same mould.

    But before we cast our votes in the referendum we’ll have to make some other changes. We have bowed in fear to these people, Church and Government alike, far too long.

    My heart goes to all the Victims, past and new. I hope you CONNECT at last with a sense of Your-Voice-Being-Heard and Justice. And that the millions in compensation come quickly. Plenty of gold in Rome.

  3. Charles O'Rourke says:

    Living here on the European mainland and listening to the media reporting on the Dublin Report and trying yet again to explain the unexplainable to enlightened secular non Catholics and seeing their dismay six months after the Ryan Report is a lesson in how warped Ireland is. You just can,t explain how the Irish government remains so passive and almost afraid to confront the mighty Roman Church. You mumble and hear yourself mention the special relationship between government and the church, and you see them shake their heads and turn away.And you look at your kids and are greatfull they are not Irish.

  4. Patrick Rice says:

    Each time I read of the reports of abuse in Ireland it refers to the past 30-40 years. To that I say it was a hell of a lot earlier than that.
    Many might ask why no one spoke out. There are a number of reasons. It was not until 1998 that the Freedom of Information was enacted. That opened the door a little. Ahearn’s apology in 1999 was a first admission of guilt, a time I was prepared to talk of my past. Many like me and long before me, wouldn’t and couldn’t talk.
    Imagine life in the 1930 when I was put away. Fear stalked the land and fear makes for control. The church instilled shame and stigma in the very young. Who, were we to tell? Who would believe us?
    Once free of these Institutions the best course of action was to get the hell away from that God fearing land. Had it been a God
    loving land it may never happened.
    Imagine if you will, the reaction if I was tell someone here in the UK; that I was brought before the courts as a two year old and charged with ‘receiving alms’ and ordered to be detained for 14 years?
    Researching my family background I now have in my possession a document listing five children that appeared before the courts. A sister of mine is the one name not blanked. Her date of birth, age and date at court
    reveal that she was age 7. The next column lists: sentence and charge: for receiving alms got 9 years!
    The remaining four entries reveal charge and ‘crime’.
    Reading the fifth entry I felt like laughing. The child is listed as five in 1943 and sentenced to 11 years and 8 months.
    His offence: “Not having any home!” Can you imagine that person telling anyone why she/he was ‘put away’ for so many years. Who would believe it? The more I delve into the past, I uncover such abuse to each member of the family I never got to know. They took their secrets to the grave. My story started 78 years ago. My number was 11,536, what about the eleven thousand five hundred boys before me? That was just one boys Institution of many at Artane, not mention the thousands of girls that were ‘put away’.
    The Island of Saints and Scholars is the Island of the dammed.

  5. Charles O'Rourke says:

    Martha,The whole concept of the Republic is deeply flawed and one has to ask the question coming up to 2016 what are we to celebrate. Would we have been worse of remaining within the UK?. Was not Ireland a satalite state of the Vatican?. We are or were a depply backward people and it was and is in the interest of the Roman Cult that we remain that way. I too live abroad in an advanced democracy and looking at Ireland in its present state one wonders if the whole country is in need of deprograming. Take a look around Europe with its advanced social legislation, Take a look at how children are protected in my new jurisdiction and you begin to understand the damage to the collective Irish pskche.No amount of patriotism or flag waveing will hide that. Its high time to look deep into your souls and come up with hard questions. My first question would be ” what does it mean to be human” begin there and forget the flags and dying for Ireland. We have had enough of that. I too love the Irish landscape and the music but it ends there and I too am gratefull that I am not part of it anymore. So wellcome to Europe when your soul searching has lead you to normality.

  6. Charles O'Rourke says:

    Paddy, allow me to make the following blasphemy. On the basis of the Ryan report and the Dublin report and the Ferns report and the Cloyne report and every other report that comes out of investigating the Roman Cult there be issiued a European Arrest Warrant of the boss for this Syndicate, I believe his name is Ratzinger.

  7. Delord says:

    I agree we need to evolve further, much further. A first step would be to stop blaming the Brits for who we are and what we’ve become. The holy catholic and apostolic church played that card so well in the Ireland of yesterday. Having travelled the world and met people of all hues I must grudgingly admit that they are far from being the worst bunch of bastards you’ll encounter. In fact the English are probably the fairest and most sympathetic people I’ve ever dealt with. I’d swap you 3 Italians and two Frenchman for an Englishman any day. But the English kept the church in check because they knew the dangers of an unfettered clergy and that’s why the clergy hated them so much and conditioned us likewise. Throw off the blinkers on that one. Point the finger at Rome instead. Remember the church emerged and evolved out of a Greco-Roman culture where paedophilia was an Olympic sport. Look at the etymology ” a love of children”. I dont buy that, I call them paedophobes. But don’t get me started.

    There is hope. As PB said above, we need to clear the field. There is a precedent. In 1901 the French premier (Comte, I think) gave the fuckers two weeks to exit health and education. Zut alors! But they did and permanently. Did the earth stop spinning on it’s axis, did the stars fall from the sky?
    Non. But when is the last time you read of a child being harmed by a priest in France?

    The Jesuits were tossed out of Sweden and Japan for wielding pernicious influence. And we still haven’t even expelled the Norbertines. Why not? Because every priest you’ve met has a brother. And that brother is either a guard or an ff councillor on his way to the Dail. And every complaint is gobbled up by the brother rather than making it’s way to the DPP. “No worries, I’ll take care of that for ye” says the brother.Family values and all that. Greco-Roman values, I’d say.

    Let’s just go back cap in hand to the Brits and say “sorry, we’ve made a hames of the place, would ye ever mind comin’ back and sortin’ it all out”

  8. Martha says:

    Although I am one who was born and raised in Ireland (the triumphalist Holy Catholic Ireland of the 1950’s) I am no Irish “nationalist” or “patriot”, in short, I am not proud to be Irish, nor would I die for this country.

    I love Ireland in terms of its landscape, but I’m not so entused by its people; I suppose 800 years of British Colonialism did something to the collective Irish psyche that I, personally, cannot idenitfy with. Perhaps thats because I have done a fair bit of travelling and living abroad…

    So, when I read through this latest (Murphy) Report on the systematic institutionalised torture of Ireland’s children, all I can say is, we have a very long long way to go as a nation, a society, a people, before we evolve into NORMAL human beings.

    I’m so greatful I’m not part of the Irish status quo.

  9. Personal View of a Victim.

    One of the chilling experiences of being abused is the cold silence and seeming indifference of the adult world to the broken child in the days, years and decades after abuse.

    Seven hundred pages of ink on paper will not translate that silence into vigorous and robust action by the Irish state or by the church, neither then nor now. What we do see now though is political expletives, posturing and broken promises and for some victims, deeply vexatious frustration of very serious complaints and deeply sinister misrepresentations to the police.

    The use of a ‘cat of nine tails’ on young children (prohibited in 1870 by the British Navy) let alone sexual abuse and the associated ‘head to toe’ strategy of total enforced and enthusiastic cover up marks out the catholic regime as deeply criminal in nature. Ratzinger is the key man and current author and enthusiast in this.

    I started using words and expressions such as ‘atrocity’, ‘crimes against humanity’ and so on some time ago to describe how I saw the church and that was long prior to the Ryan report. More and more these terms represent the true routine actions of the Roman church with clearer and clearer realism.

    Clerical abuse is not history, it is not going to go away with some ink on paper. It will take society some time (if ever)to wake up to the reality of the vile hoax that the Catholic church has pepetuated though its offices for the past decades and longer in Ireland. The church uses deeply invasive and traumatising processes designed to brainwash children for life into a system of loyalty and submissiveness as adults through childhood mental trauma with concepts of devils and damnation. It harnesses deeply rooted fears of mortality and translates this through a death culture to a system whereby participants must obey and not question to avoid being roasted over a spit in the hereafter. Thats what it amounts to, primative brainwashing not a sophisticated lover of humanity. And why, because power brings rewards and control and this is the essence of self fulfilment for many the many power hundry and disturbed individuals and represent themselves as clerics.

    What is the future…the ink and press conferences will not change much, the church will continue to control in Ireland. That is of course, unless enlightnment leaks into the mind of the populace and still it will take schism and perhaps a popular come back of a new King Henry VIII to clear the field.

    Will we see it in our life time? I hope so because there is no place in any society for this vile scourge that represents itself as enlightenment itself while behind the curtains of a compliant state, continues on it path of abuse and evasion for abominable and unimaginable perversion.

    The Irish State should send them packing. Firstly though, the Irish people have to decide what they stand for, submissive zoombie accolytes or free thinking enlightened people prepared to action their democratic pinciples against an autocratic church and state to demand change. It will not come with whispers that is for sure.

    Yours sincerely

    RB

  10. FXR says:

    Maybe someday the flock will wake up and realise that the most important thing to the Catholic Church is the Catholic Church itself, not it’s followers or those it claims are members.