Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Labour call for probe into hushing-up of abuse

THE gardaí should investigate Cardinal Seán Brady’s involvement in the hushing-up of paedophilia in the Catholic Church, Labour last night insisted.

The move added to pressure on the head of the Irish Church to resign over his role in a 1975 canonical inquiry into child sex abuser, Fr Brendan Smyth.

Labour’s social and family affairs spokeswoman, Roisín Shortall, said the party believed the cardinal had contravened the Offences against the State Act, 1939, and gardaí should probe his role in the church inquiry to see if criminal proceedings were necessary.

Cardinal Brady took notes at a meeting where a 10-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl abused by Smyth were forced to take a vow of silence. The cardinal denies he helped to cover up cases of alleged sex abuse of children in Kilmore diocese.

Ms Shortall said it was "beyond belief" that abuse victims should be made to swear a vow of secrecy.

She has called for gardaí to investigate whether he should face criminal proceedings over the matter.

"Our legal information to date is certainly that under the Offences against the State Act, 1939, it was a criminal offence to take an oath for the purposes of covering up a crime.

"The Labour Party is calling for a Garda investigation into the role of Seán Brady in this entire affair.

"I believe that there should be a Garda investigation to determine whether or not the failure to report Fr Smyth’s crimes to the civil authorities was, itself, a criminal offence.

"It’s bad enough that a priest abused a number of children, but it’s really beyond belief that there was a situation where children were required to take an oath to hide that abuse."

Ms Shortall said it was not the place for politicians to call for resignations in organisations such as the Catholic Church.

The Smyth controversy triggered the collapse of the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition of the early 1990s after it emerged there were major delays in the priest’s extradition to the North in 1994.
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