State failed to protect children too

IN the understandable furore over the Cloyne report I find it strange that the same level of outrage and media coverage never arises when abuse takes place outside religious institutions.

If child protection is the primary concern of pundits and politicians then why was there not the same rigour in pursuing those responsible for the appalling oversights, failures to take action and sheer culpable neglect on the part of health and welfare personnel in the cases of the McColgan family in Sligo and the even more horrific Roscommon case where a family of six were removed from their mother after eight long years of unremitting abuse?

One of the interesting things about the Cloyne report is that the church personnel involved were deemed to have failed by the standards they had set for themselves. The standards against which they failed were not State standards but the standards adopted by the Irish Bishops Conference. Implicit in this, is the failure of the State to legislate and protect its children as it ought to. The new legislation, which is now flagged must look to encompass all children at risk of abuse particularly those who are abused in their own homes who are the most vulnerable of all having nowhere to turn. Coralling the clergy to the point where even the most decent priest is seen as a potential risk in need of the kind of surveillance usually reserved for released prisoners is not going to help the child who runs risks that are much closer to home.

That is not to say that there should be any complacency about the willingness and ability of the church to deliver on child safeguarding without rigorous oversight by the relevant authorities. There is an endemic problem within the Catholic church where the exercise of power is concerned. No amount of reports and strictures will change the way parishes and dioceses do business. That change must be forced from the ground upwards.

It is a question of transparency, openness and accountability that will ensure that the resources of the church are used as they should be, for the evangelisation of the young and disaffected and the building up of faith communities and not in payoffs and undisclosed outlay for whatever may be the current priority of the given diocesan ordinary.

Margaret Hickey

Blarney

Co Cork