A WOMAN who was the child safeguarding representative in a Dublin Catholic parish for over a decade has resigned following her discovery last month that a priest serving there until recently had been on “restricted ministry” for years. It followed allegations of child sex abuse against him.
She had also not been informed that the same priest was the subject of a chapter in the 2009 Murphy report on clerical sexual abuse.
The parish pastoral council was not given any of this information about the priest either. It remains unclear just how much information the current parish priest there had been told about the priest, who was given the pseudonym Fr Benito in the Murphy report.
Two complaints against Fr Benito were addressed by the Murphy commission. One concerned an alleged sexual assault against a 15-year-old boy in 1988. The second concerned an alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl. In October 2002 the DPP decided not to prosecute in either case.
Afterwards, Fr Benito was allowed to serve in the parish following advice from the Granada Institute, which dealt with priest abusers and has since closed. It recommended that, should Fr Benito return to ministry, he “be required to avoid any informal relationship and friendships with young people and that he be supervised by an experienced priest for at least two years”.
The priest’s history only came to light last month when some in the parish became concerned on being informed by the archdiocese that Fr Benito was standing aside from ministry as it had new information on him. The great majority of parishioners remain unaware of this, as no statement has been made publicly on the matter. It is understood that this is for legal reasons.
According to interim guidelines for such cases, published last February by the National Board for Safeguarding Children and adopted by the Irish Catholic bishops, “the Bishop/Congregational leader (in this instance Archbishop Diarmuid Martin) is responsible for what is communicated and how this is communicated . . .”
For legal reasons, Fr Benito, his parish, its former child safeguarding representative and its parish priest cannot be named.*
In 2009 the Murphy report said it was “very concerned that breakdowns in internal archdiocesan communications may still have been occurring in 2005” where this parish and Fr Benito were concerned.
It felt the parish priest “should have been given a more detailed briefing, in particular in a case where there were concerns about both boys and girls”.
The archdiocese confirmed that “a priest of the diocese agreed to stand aside from ministry last month in accordance with church and State guidelines for the protection of children. This was as a precautionary measure in order that information giving rise to a child protection concern may be examined. The gardaí and the HSE were previously informed of this case. The archdiocese does not comment on the detail of individual safeguarding cases”.
* This article was amended on April 25th, 2012, to correct a factual inaccuracy
