Who will speak for abuse survivors?

“DIARMUID MARTIN said the apostolic visitation appointed to help the Catholic Church in the wake of the clerical sex abuse crisis has completed its work.”

Again, the focus is on helping the Church, not the survivors. Helping the Church to do what? ‘Manage the crisis’. As any survivor will tell anyone who cares to listen, or whose heart is strong enough to feel or sense what it is like to be a survivor of childhood sexual abuse or brutality perpetrated by clergy in institutions of ‘care’, the focus on management of ‘the crisis’ wounds, and re-wounds all survivors, because it is fundamentally dishonest and not about the Christian values of compassion, healing and nurturance, but about the non-christian values of power and status.

That anyone, be they clerics or Government officials, can stand by and not act rapidly in the best interests of the survivors, is a profound indictment of our society.

The sad truth is that if it were not for the voices of survivors this would remain a secret even still.

Where are the good people of Ireland? Where are the good Christians?

Cornelius Crowley

South Harrow

London