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Title: Damning report into child abuse in Irish diocese
Source:
Times Online (UK)
URL Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1842777,00.html
Published: Oct 25, 2005
Author: Simon Freeman and agencies
Post Date: 2005-10-25 23:13:26 by robin
Keywords: Damning, diocese, report
Views: 10
Damning report into child abuse in Irish diocese The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was today reeling from a report which unmasks, in harrowing detail, four decades of institutionalised sexual abuse of children by priests. Church leaders, police and state agencies in County Wexford, southeast Ireland, were all criticised for failing to acknowledge or act upon dozens of reports of molestation and rape. Eamonn Walsh, the Bishop of Ferns, apologised unreservedly following the publication of the Ferns Inquiry Report today: "Even though I have been dealing with this for years, reading a litany of such horrible, horrible gross abuse and rape all condensed together, it just leaves me speechless... "We were ordained to bring God to people and reach out to the most vulnerable. Some of our people preyed on the most vulnerable and abused them in the most horrific way," he said. In a statement to the Dail, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described the findings as "a catalogue of serial abuse and gross dereliction of duty". The Opposition leader, Enda Kenny, said: "The detail is scandalous and brings shame on a civilised society. It is a shocking wake-up call to the Church and the state." The publication follows a two-year investigation by Frank Murphy, a retired Irish Supreme Court Judge. He interviewed more than 100 people who claimed they were assaulted by 21 priests - eight of whom have since died. The investigation has huge implications for the Catholic Church which is struggling with abuse scandals worldwide. Two Bishops who were in charge of the Ferns diocese between 1966 and 2002 came in for the most severe criticism in the report. Donal Herlihy, Bishop from 1964 to 1983, protected abusers, the report says. He ordained "clearly unsuitable" candidates for the priesthood. Under his control, priests accused of abuse would be temporarily shifted to different posts, before returning to their parishes. This was: "ill-advised, inadequate and inappropriate". Brendan Comiskey, his successor, who resigned in 2002 after admitting he had not done enough to prevent abuse, was more conscious of the need to protect the reputation of clergy than the children. Money was paid to some complainants. The most notorious priest in the diocese was Father Sean Fortune. Father Fortune, who was awaiting trial on 29 charges of indecent assault and other offences, relating to eight boys dating back to the late 1970s, killed himself in his fortress-like house in 1999. He had been removed from his post in 1993, only to return as a curate two years later. The report also found that Ireland’s national police force, the Garda Siochana, rarely investigated complaints of abuse properly and kept no records of any such cases before 1988. Publication of the report was delayed for several hours yesterday because of legal arguments. It has not been published on the internet and while six priests were named the other 15 were referred to by initials. Mr Ahern said that immediate action would be taken to implement the report's recommendations. "I think it is shocking to everybody’s sense of how children should be protected. Our thoughts go out to the victims and their families. The report brings out the full horror of their situation ... and catalogues the continuing failure to respond adequately in Ferns until recent years. It’s obviously shocking that it went for decades." Brian Lenihan, the government’s minister for children said: "It is clear from the report that effective action was not taken to protect vulnerable children over a period of many years." The report concluded Church authorities, the medical profession and society in general failed to appreciate the damage which the sexual abuse of children causes. Judge Murphy said the inquiry team was struck by the hurt still borne by mature and fair-minded victims of abuse. The report said: "The members of the Inquiry would express the hope that should the type of abuse chronicled in this report ever occur again, there will be mechanisms and procedures in place which will enable victims promptly to report the abuse in confidence that they would be believed and the certainty that appropriate action would be taken to terminate the wrongdoing." A spokesman for the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said: "This cruelty, consisting not just of sexual abuse of children, but of institutionalised silence and inaction, served not only to traumatise and hurt children but also served to make these children feel that they were to blame for the abuse perpetrated on them. Many of these children, now adults, still carry the emotional and psychological impact of their experiences." At a crowded press conference in the small presbytery at St Michael’s in Gorey, Dr Walsh said he would not comment on individual cases but said he had visited the woman who had been abused as a young girl by Canon Martin Clancy, now dead. Canon Clancy had a secret child after raping a 14-year-old girl, and left money for her in his will, the report says. Dr Walsh said: "I unreservedly and sincerely apologise to all who have suffered in these or in any other way through the sexual abuse by a priest of the diocese. For those who have been abused, where that abuse was compounded by the response, or lack of response, by the diocese, words of apology cannot be left unspoken." He said that people who were abused would never fully heal and the scar would always be with them. "There are no excuses for what has happened in the past. However the most effective response to what we cannot change in the past is what we are doing today, and what we will do in the future," he said. Dr Walsh said the diocese, which has been exposed in the report as having the greatest concentration of clerical child abuse in the world, was now committed to ensuring that Ferns was as safe an environment for children as possible.
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