Church reviews policies on clerical child abuse

FRESH safeguards are planned by the Catholic Church to ensure procedures for the protection of children from sex abuse come up to national standards and are not restricted by canon law.

A new working group on child protection policy met for the first time yesterday to begin reviewing the Church’s existing policies and identify necessary changes.

Its chief concern will be making sure Church practices measure up to the Children First guidelines devised by the Department of Health and Children and implemented by health boards and other agencies since 1999.

Part of that process will involve removing any barriers created by secrecy-laden Church laws.

“Canon law will not take precedent over civil law. That’s an absolute given,” said group chairwoman Maureen Lynott.

The group was formed by the Irish Bishops Conference, the Conference of Religious of Ireland and the Irish Missionary Union, and includes social workers, a theologian, canon lawyer, garda chief superintendent and the British co-ordinator of victims’ organisation Survivors of Child Abuse.

The move follows criticisms by victims’ groups that the 1996 guidelines adopted by the Church for dealing with clerical child sex abuse were hopelessly inadequate.

Survivors’ campaigner Marie Collins, whose own attempts to make the Dublin Diocese acknowledge her abuse were thwarted by references to canon law, welcomed the development but said she hoped for swift progress as little had happened since her landmark meeting with Cardinal Desmond Connell last December.

“I have found that things move very slowly in the Church. It’s like pushing a boulder uphill. You get a few inches and then it stops.

"Hopefully the group will work at speed because those old guidelines really are old. They are not sufficient to protect children now."

Mrs Collins said that, under existing Church guidelines, people reporting abuse still had to report to a priest , and once a victim began legal proceedings,

Church legal advisers effectively barred contact so the person was deprived of pastoral care.