I reported a child abuser – and I was only 13

IN 1972, when I was 13-years-old, some other children revealed to me they were being routinely abused by a man whom nobody had previously realised was a paedophile.

Though it was extremely embarrassing and difficult and the children involved pleaded with me not to tell anyone because of their fear of retribution from their abuser, I knew enough to realise this was something I had to make sure their parents were made aware of.

The man was subsequently prosecuted and imprisoned.

It is with a stomach-churning sense of disgust that I have listened to Cardinal Brady pleading how three years later, at the age of 35, he who had supposedly dedicated his life to upholding morality nevertheless did not know any better than to force two abused children to take a vow of silence which protected their abuser and the church from discovery, thereby facilitating the abuse of many other children. For centuries, the Catholic Church was a powerful influence on setting the age of criminal responsibility at just seven.

From the Vatican down, the character of the church’s response to this issue is that of a paedophile: denial, evasion, self-pity, defiance and a tendency to blame anyone but themselves.

If this were any other institution, it would be shut down and disbanded immediately.

A major criminal investigation is urgently needed and prosecutions of all those found culpable – including members of state and other agencies who were just as complicit in many respects and who are so far escaping scot-free from any form of meaningful scrutiny.

Miriam Cotton

Woodlands

Clonakilty

Co Cork