Businessman bids to freeze Church assets
The unprecedented move follows Tuesday's landmark settlement when the Archdiocese of Dublin was ordered to pay €300,000 to abuse victim Mervyn Rundle. The case could spark a flood of similar claims from hundreds of other victims.
A legal firm in Cork is preparing the High Court challenge by the businessman, which is being supported by Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA), which represents over 800 victims of clerical sex abuse.
"The Mervyn Rundle settlement has given us added impetus. There is a danger that the Church could move assets abroad like they tried to do in Canada and Boston. We don't want that to happen," the businessman said yesterday.
The father-of-three, who claims he was physically and sexually abused along with other boys in his class, said there are 150 cases already being pursued in Dublin and thousands more in the pipeline nationwide. "The potential pay-out is enormous," he said.
SOCA is also calling for the charitable status of the Church to be revoked. Spokesperson John Kelly said freezing the Church's assets and revoking charitable status would compel the hierarchy to co-operate more fully with abuse cases.
"Despite all that's gone on, the Church is still in denial either Ireland rules or Rome rules," Mr Kelly said.
Opposition parties called on the Attorney General to examine the controversial deal signed between the Catholic Church and State to compensate victims of sex abuse in religious institutions.
The religious orders agreed to pay €128 million in cash and property to the State towards the cost of compensation. In return they received blanket indemnity from any further legal action.
Labour Justice spokesman Joe Costello said the legal integrity of the deal must be examined because the estimated cost of compensating these victims had rocketed to over 1 billion since it was signed last June.
Mr Costello called on the 18 religious orders who signed the Residential Institutions Redress Board deal to voluntarily renegotiate it now because he claimed they are not paying a fair share.
"I believe that responsibility for the abuse that was carried out in these institutions should be borne 50/50 by both the religious orders who ran them and the State which had statutory responsibility," Mr Costello said
Fine Gael Education spokeswoman Olwyn Enright said Education Minister Noel Dempsey should seek legal advice on reopening the controversial deal between Church and State.
A spokeswoman for the 18 religious orders refused to comment on any possible renegotiation.
