Child abuse: let’s have one national agency with force of law behind it

A GROUP of senior bankers have gone to see the Minister for Finance.

They’ve told him they know people are unhappy with a lot of the things that have been happening in the banking sector and they accept that there must be reform and change. The minister, delighted with the meeting, agrees to a joint statement.

The statement says: “The Minister for Finance welcomed the bank’s renewed commitment to responsible behaviour, including their agreement to sign a written statement implementing really good practice in future. Because everyone is determined to be helpful, we are going to find a new way to safeguard investors and customers and we’re going to cooperate with each other to ensure that some of the things that have happened before don’t happen again. The minister and the bankers agreed that further meetings would be convened to process important issues concerning the safeguarding of customers and investors.”

Imagine the reaction. I suspect the Minister for Finance would be attacked from all sides if he accepted that written statements agreeing to be good was an appropriate way to proceed. And of course, nothing of the kind has happened. Instead, the current Minister for Finance, having accepted the retirement of the banking regulator, is examining ways to strengthen the regime.

But if you change the word “bankers” to “bishops” in the preceding three paragraphs, that’s almost precisely what has happened. Last weekend the Catholic hierarchy sent a deputation of their most senior bishops to sit down with the Minister for Children, and at the end of the meeting a joint statement was issued in which the bishops said they would each be signing a written commitment to implement the new safeguarding and guidance materials of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

If there was any discussion about putting the new rules on a statutory basis — giving them the compellability that law would require — it was not referred to in the joint statement.

Instead “Cardinal Brady, Archbishop Martin and Minister Andrews agreed that further meetings would be convened to process important issues concerning the safeguarding of children”.

It’s simply not enough. Surely we have learned by now that self-regulation is no regulation and that voluntary codes of practice don’t provide guarantees. Whatever is now put in place has to be given the force of law. Nothing less is acceptable.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing but respect for the church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children. In its relatively short life it has shown itself to be independent and tough, and indeed could well serve as a perfect model for the sort of auditing and investigating body we need nationally.

As someone who has previously advocated a national safeguarding authority, with statutory powers and responsibilities, I wouldn’t hesitate to appoint Ian Elliott, who runs the Church body, as its chief executive.

But look at the wider history. Thirteen years ago the Catholic Church adopted a set of guidelines intended to guarantee the highest standards of child protection and to set out fundamental principles. It was called Our Children, Our Church. Ever since then it has been constantly referred to as the model for best practice.

But virtually every bishop and every religious order has done their own version of the document, to the point where dozens of different versions of it are in operation. One Catholic priest, who has taken to writing me very cross and occasionally abusive letters, has claimed that Our Children Our Church has been discredited. But it hasn’t — it has simply been ignored.

That’s why the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church has been working hard on what it calls a standards and guidance document.

As I understand it, that document is ready for publication, and it is the intention of the board that every bishop and the head of every religious order will sign an undertaking to be bound by it. The document will be published and will be regarded by the board as binding. Its principles, practices and procedures have all been prepared to be in accordance with the best practice in the world.

That’s great, and it’s admirable. But if one asks one simple question — “what happens if a bishop, or any other senior religious, decides to ignore it?” — there is no answer. We can be sure that as long as Ian Elliott is around, adherence to the document will be scrupulously audited and breaches will be made public, no doubt to the embarrassment of the religious involved and the whole Church.

But we’ve been there before, haven’t we? Embarrassment, it seems, is something that senior churchmen can learn to live with. Without the force of law, compellability is not possible. That’s why the Church’s body, and the best practice standards it is developing, needs to be folded into a national body. And that national body needs to be set up by the Houses of the Oireachtas in a law that finally makes it clear that no one can evade their responsibility when it comes to child protection. The other reason we need a national body is that this whole issue doesn’t just concern the Church. We already know children are more at risk — of neglect and abuse — at home than anywhere else. That’s an unpalatable truth, but it’s one we were all shown, in awful relief, by the events that unfolded in Roscommon last week.

That terrible affair is now going to be investigated, and the lessons revealed for us all to learn. I can’t preempt that investigation, and I wouldn’t want to anyway. But I have been amazed all week long at the number of people who have asked me questions about it and who were unaware there is no law in Ireland that compels people who know about abuse to report it.

WE HAVE to, simply have to, introduce a law that makes the reporting of child abuse, by people who have good reason to be concerned, compulsory. Until we do, all of us will carry some part of the burden of guilt at any set of circumstances that allows young lives to be destroyed while we stand idly by. And it happens all the time.

If we had a national safeguarding authority, its independence protected by law, it would audit compliance with standards not just within the Church, but in the statutory sector, and among all of us who are involved in the work of child protection and have children within our care.

And it would be the body to whom we could turn in confidence when standards were breached or appeared to be breached. It would automatically undertake investigations into situations like Roscommon and provide the reassurance we all need that lessons are not only being learned but applied.

We all believe in child protection. Most of us regard it as fundamental, as a core value of a decent place to live. But until we stop relying on self-protecting institutions, and start putting proper legal standards in place and enforcing them, children will continue to be betrayed. And none of us want to be responsible for that, do we?