The Irish Times – Friday, November 27, 2009
CARL O’BRIEN and PATSY McGARRY
FOUR SUCCESSIVE archbishops of Dublin responded to clerical child sexual abuse over a 30-year period in their diocese with “denial, arrogance and cover-up”.
This is one of the main conclusions of the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin.
The three-year inquiry, led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, found the “structures and rules” of the Catholic Church facilitated the cover-up.
“The State authorities facilitated the 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,” the report also found.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern, who published the report yesterday, said it documented “a scandal on an astonishing scale”.
The report also found current child protection laws did not provide adequate powers to health authorities to protect the welfare of children who are abused, or in danger of abuse, by people with privileged access to children.
The report, which took three years to complete, said the archdiocese had an “obsessive concern with secrecy and the avoidance of scandal” and had “little or no concern for the welfare of the abused child”.
Continue reading »
