Taking responsibility for children

There has been some progress but more is needed to ensure the safeguarding of children, writes Maeve Lewis

THE audits of four dioceses and four religious orders published on Wednesday give us an accurate insight into the current state of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Following a decade of child sexual abuse scandals which rocked the Church and society, has anything really changed? The audits tell us that in some areas the lessons of the Ferns, Ryan, Dublin, and Cloyne reports have been absorbed, but in others it is as if they had never been published.

The Dioceses of Limerick and of Cork and Ross in particular showed that despite many serious failures in the past, robust child protection procedures are now in place. Resources have been invested in training lay people and priests, and there are clear pathways to assist victims to come forward with complaints.

Unfortunately, at the other end of the scale the Diocese of Clonfert did not even have a child protection policy in place in 2011, and the professional child protection advisory committee had to resign on foot of the bishop’s failure to remove two Redemptorist priests against whom substantial allegations had been made from a retreat centre where they had access to schoolchildren.

In the case of the religious orders, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and the Spiritans received particular criticism. Protecting offender priests, failures to notify the civil authorities — this sounds all too familiar. In the case of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, instructions were found in the files to defend “robustly” any allegations made against priests, leading in one case to a threat to sue the victim if he did not desist.

At One in Four we are not surprised by the findings of the audits, because they accurately reflect the experiences of our clients in engaging with dioceses and orders.

There is no consistency. In some cases victims are met with a humane, compassionate response. If compensation is an issue then the bishop or superior will engage in mediation to settle a just financial award.

In other cases the victim meets a cold, adversarial, legalistic response that allows no possibility of pastoral engagement. Perhaps the most sickening situations are where the Church personnel react initially in a caring, sympathetic manner, assuring the victim of their belief and support, followed by a vigorous defence of any compensation claim all the way to the High Court.

The difference in approach lies in the person of the bishop or religious leader. If the most senior person really understands the dynamics of child abuse and its devastating impact, and is genuinely committed to ensuring children in his orbit are safe, then change happens.

If the senior person is going through the motions, victims continue to suffer and children are still at risk.

The audits show us that the Catholic Church is still in crisis and is in danger of tearing itself apart. Bishops, priests, and lay people across the country who have worked tirelessly to introduce good practice must have been in despair on Wednesday morning when they saw the credibility and trust that they are so slowly and painfully rebuilding being wiped away by the reckless actions of certain bishops and religious superiors.

It seems as if senior churchmen can renege with impunity on the commitments and promises made regarding child protection and other Church leaders seems powerless to intervene.

We have to break this culture of impunity. There is very little we can do about the past but I would like the gardaí to use the Criminal Justice Act 2006, which created the crime of reckless endangerment of children, to investigate if there is evidence that senior churchmen, by their actions or omissions, put children in the way of harm.

Perhaps if a senior decision maker were to be convicted in the criminal courts it would encourage his reluctant peers to take their obligations to children more seriously.

What is clear is that we cannot assume just because so much has been exposed about clerical sex abuse that all Church leaders accept the reality of what happened or feel compelled to prioritise the safety of children. This means that constant, transparent monitoring of safeguarding practices must be accepted by all concerned and the results made public.

Ian Elliot and his team at the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church must be congratulated for the independent and rigorous audits they have so far undertaken.

But it is not enough to leave the Church to monitor itself. It is simply not acceptable that the State would renege on its responsibilities to ensure all children are free from sexual harm. This extends far beyond abuse in the Catholic Church.

Reports stretching back to the 1990s — the Kilkenny incest case, the McColgans, and more recently the Roscommon case — have shown us that terrible things also happen to children in their families and in their neighbourhoods. We cannot pretend that we do not know. We have been promised action by successive governments with little accomplished.

There has been some progress now, with the appointment of a full minister for children, Frances Fitzgerald. She is intent on placing the child protection guidelines, the Children First Guidance, on statutory footing. This will make it a crime for an array of professionals and organisations to fail to report concerns about a child.

She is also establishing a new Children and Family Agency. Alan Shatter, the justice minister, is introducing legislation to make it a criminal offence for anybody to fail to report a serious crime against a child. Of course, without the necessary resources to deal with new allegations, nothing may really change.

However, attitudes tend to follow legislation. Many of the abuses of the past took place in plain view. People knew what was happening but choose not to act.

My hope is that the new laws will help create a culture where every single adult in this country is prepared to take responsibility for all our children and not turn away when we are worried about a child’s wellbeing.

* Maeve Lewis is executive director of One in Four