POWERS OF compellability should be extended by the State to the Catholic Church child protection watchdog to ensure co-operation by bishops and religious superiors, its chief executive has said.
An audit by the church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children is investigating child protection practices in the island’s 26 Catholic dioceses. It will then investigate the remaining 162 Catholic institutions on the island run mainly by religious congregations.
Ian Elliott, board chief executive, told The Irish Times"everyone wants the audits completed. Public inquiries are very slow and costly. It is not the best way of progressing this issue." This, he felt, "would be in partnership between the State and the board". It would be "great" if statutory compellability powers were extended to the board as Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said, he commented.
On RTÉ One’s Six One News last Wednesday, Archbishop Martin warned that senior church figures who were not prepared to be honest would only be “discovered” through an “invasive” audit of child protection practices. Currently the board is dependent on “moral power” in ensuring co-operation.
Mr Elliott agreed this had not worked in Cloyne diocese, where the board uncovered evidence that child protection practices were “inadequate and in some respects dangerous”. This led to the remit of the Murphy commission being extended to include Cloyne.
According to the board’s Review of Safeguarding Practice in the Catholic Church, the audit sets out “to ascertain the full extent of all complaints or allegations, knowledge, suspicions or concerns” of clerical child sex abuse in the period from January 1st, 1975, to the present. Its objective is “to confirm how known allegations have been responded to and what the current arrangements for safeguarding children are” in the relevant diocese or institution.
The audit “is dependent upon full and complete access to all relevant documentation and information relating to the abuse of children known to the individual church authorities.”
Six dioceses have been fully audited to date. It is hoped this will have been completed in all 26 dioceses by mid-2012. Bishop Philip Boyce of Raphoe and Bishop Colm O’Reilly of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise have revealed audits have taken place in their dioceses.
Mr Elliott recalled that when he went to investigate Cloyne he was presented with “about 10 pieces of paper. It didn’t take long to realise that these were different pieces lifted out of a file”. Some referred to other documents which had not been provided. Following a crisis meeting with Bishop of Cloyne John Magee and diocesan delegate Msgr Denis O’Callaghan, further files were produced.
“But it wasn’t till later we discovered that some of the information given was false,” Mr Elliott said.
Altogether, the Cloyne commission found there were 12,000 abuse files in Cloyne, most kept in Msgr O’Callaghan’s home.
Generally, the board knows when it encounters honesty in conducting its audit, Mr Elliott said, and there were procedures to encourage this. When such honesty was not forthcoming the audit simply ended, he said.
Full details of the audit/review process are available at safeguarding.ie
