Four archbishops colluded to cover up child sex attacks
Here’s a real shocker..
Four archbishops colluded to cover up child sex attacks
The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland connived with the authorities in a cover-up spanning decades to shield paedophile priests from prosecution, an official report concluded yesterday. Hundreds of crimes against children were not reported as the four archbishops of the Archdiocese of Dublin remained wedded to the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets”.
Instead, the church hierarchy shuffled the sex offenders from parish to parish, allowing them to continue to prey on victims. In some cases paedophile priests were even promoted. The 750-page report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse on the Dublin archdiocese — the second significant inquiry this year to expose appalling levels of sexual abuse of minors in Ireland under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church — said that it had uncovered a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy throughout the period that it investigated between 1975 and 2004.
It said that the State had helped to create the culture of cover-up and that senior police officers regarded priests as “outside their remit”.
“The State authorities facilitated that 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,” it concluded.
“The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities.
“The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.”
While the inquiry found no evidence of a paedophile ring, it said that there were some worrying connections and that one priest admitted sexually abusing more than 100 children.
Another admitted that he abused on a fortnightly basis during his 25-year ministry. One priest, against whom a single complaint was made, admitted abusing at least six other children.
Over the period within the report’s remit “the welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages”, it said.
“Instead, the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members — the priests.”
Four archbishops, John Charles McQuaid, who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan, who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara, who died in 1987, and Cardinal Desmond Connell, retired, did not hand over information on abusers.
The first files in the cases of 17 priests were handed over by Cardinal Connell in 1995 but, even then, he had records of complaints against at least 28 priests.
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thanks to kchiu for this submission.