Mistrust is clouding resolution of the clerical abuse issue

SOME months back I was on Vincent Browne’s radio programme discussing a new report, A Time to Listen - Confronting Child Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy, commissioned by Irish bishops.

One of the authors, Dr Hannah McGee, gave many startling findings from her research into sex abuse. For example, almost a third of women and a quarter of men had reported some kind of sexual abuse in childhood.

Vincent Browne was even more surprised by another fact - only a small proportion of the abuse reported, 3%, had been perpetrated by clergy or religious.