COMPLAINT TO GARDAÍ: A RETIRED school principal who
made a complaint to gardaí that Bishop of Cloyne John Magee should be
prosecuted for endangering children has reiterated his call for
prosecutions after reading the Commission of Investigation Report into
the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne.
Eugene Riordan from Kanturk, Co
Cork, said he was initially moved to complain to gardaí about Bishop
Magee in 2009 after reading the National Board For Safeguarding Children
in the Catholic Church report on child protection practices in Cloyne.
“In
that report, Ian Elliott refers to the case of Fr B and notes that in
diocesan files on the case it was clear that the diocesan policy was to
give ‘minimal’ information to gardaí and ‘no information was to be
volunteered in respect of any previous complaints about this priest’,”
he said.
“That got my goat at the time and I wrote to gardaí in
January 2009 and they eventually took a statement of complaint from me
and they wrote back in October 2010 to say that the DPP had decided that
there was no evidence of the commission of any offence.”
Mr
Riordan said that while he was always aware that Bishop Magee could not
be prosecuted for an offence of reckless endangerment, as it only came
into law after the diocese’s handling of the Fr B case, he believed
there were other options open to the DPP.
“I’m not a lawyer but
there is an offence of seeking to pervert the course of justice and
reading the commission of investigation report, it’s clear Bishop Magee
and Msgr Denis O’Callaghan concealed information in the case of another
priest whom the commission calls Fr Caden.
“Bishop Magee sent a
report confirming Fr Caden’s admission of abuse to Rome but sent a
report saying Fr Caden denied he ever abused a boy to the diocese files
in Cobh, which were the ones which he first made available to gardaí
investigating abuse by Fr Caden.”
Mr Riordan said Msgr O’Callaghan
had adopted a cynical approach to implementing the church’s own
guidelines on child protection and that was evident in his decision not
to give Fr Caden’s name to gardaí even though he did give them the name
of the complainant.
“I don’t wish to minimise the trauma of abuse
for victims but to my mind, Bishop Magee and
Msgr O’Callaghan were 20
times worse than the abusers by covering it up – the abuse is bad but
you expect those in management to deal with it, not to hide it.”
Mr Riordan said he was impressed with the report compiled by Judge Yvonne Murphy. “It’s clear and it doesn’t pull its punches.”