Victims call for prosecutions over collusion

SENIOR Church figures, gardaí and politicians who colluded with or ignored evidence of abuse should face criminal prosecution, victims’ groups declared yesterday.

Amid growing anger at the scale of the cover-up within the Church hierarchy and deference to the Church from gardaí and health boards, survivors accused those who failed to address the decades of abuse in Dublin of being “as guilty as the perpetrators”.

One survivor of clerical abuse in the capital, Andrew Madden, said even former taoiseach Bertie Ahern has questions to answer over his failure to open an inquiry into Mr Madden’s revelations during his time as taoiseach.