THE CLOYNE report into the handling of clerical child sex abuse in that mainly Co Cork Catholic diocese, is expected to be published this week. Sources indicated last night that this could be on Friday.
Others said it may be sooner as edits necessary, following a High Court decision last Friday, are fewer than was the case following a similar High Court decision where the Murphy report was concerned and prior to its publication in November 2009.
The period covered by the Cloyne investigation was from January 1st, 1996, to February 1st, 2009 – the introduction of the Irish Catholic Church’s first guidelines on child protection. The resulting Cloyne report contains 26 chapters, is approximately 400 pages long, and had included findings on all 19 priests who faced abuse allegations there over the period investigated.
Last Friday the president of the High Court Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns decided that parts of chapter nine are not to be published for now because of pending criminal proceedings against one priest. The completed report was presented to then minister for justice Dermot Ahern on December 23rd last and followed a two-year investigation by the commission, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, which also investigated the handling of clerical child sex abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.
The remit of the Murphy commission was extended to include Cloyne in January 2009 following publication the previous month on the Cloyne diocesan website of a report by the Catholic Church’s own child protection watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSC).
It found that child protection practices in Cloyne were “inadequate and in some respects dangerous”. It said that in December 2004 a priest there reported to the then Bishop of Cloyne John Magee that he had been abused as a child. In May 2005 the priest named his abuser, another priest of the diocese. Four months later Bishop Magee met the accused, who resigned.
It was not until November 19th, 2005, six months after the Cloyne authorities were first made aware of the abuser priest’s name, that gardaí were informed and then Cloyne only supplied the name of the victim. Nor were gardaí told that the accused was also a priest of the diocese.
In another case the NBSC found that the diocese did not report a case to the gardaí for eight years after it first received allegations. This, it said, was “not exceptional” in Cloyne where it was clear “that the policy of the diocese in their contacts with the gardaí was to give ‘minimal’ information.”
It also found that meetings convened by the diocese on child protection were “apparently focused on the needs of the accused priest” with no documentary evidence that the risk to vulnerable children was discussed.
Bishop Magee stood aside as Bishop of Cloyne in March 2009 and resigned in March 2010.
