Victims’ group backs bishop on paedophiles

THE leading victims’ support group in Ireland is defending the Bishop of Killaloe’s claim that demonising paedophiles is putting children at risk.

Director of One in Four, Colm O’Gorman, said society needed to confront child abuse rather than pushing it away.

He said Bishop Willie Walsh is correct to say child abusers should have full access to treatment.

“The argument that the cost of funding perpetrator programmes is denying treatment for the victims is wrong when we should be investing in both.

“We should be recognising that offender treatment is about child protection. It might be a comfortable, easy thing... to demonise offenders, but it is not helpful.

“This is not about ignoring them this is about confronting the problem and dealing with it properly. Demonising offenders may make society feel better, but it doesn’t help.”

He said, in the past, people had contacted One in Four concerned about their own behaviour, but the lack of perpetrator intervention places meant there were limited treatment options.

However, he said the Bishop’s comment to RTÉ radio that the paedophiles he had met were lonely and broken men could not be used to describe all those convicted of sexual abuse.

“Certainly some offenders are broken individuals, but equally many of the people are very manipulative with no desire to reform or confront what they have done.

“We would argue it should be mandatory for perpetrators to take part in an intervention programme before getting early release, that a risk assessment be carried out before every release, and there be post-release support programmes.”

Mr O’Gorman said people needed to accept the reality of child abuse by ensuring treatment was available to everybody affected by it.

“We also have to look at... the family of the perpetrator and see if treatment needs to be provided.

“We have to start putting in place measures to deal with the very low reporting of sexual crimes, in particular when it concerns children. At the moment we are almost fully reliant on the criminal justice system, which is just not working.”

On Sunday, Dr Walsh told RTÉ the small number of abusers he had met with were broken and lonely men, who had not matured sexually.

The bishop also defended the manner in which he dealt with the case of Fr Con Desmond, recently given a three-year suspended sentence for abusing a 10-year-old boy early in the 1980s.