Monday, August 08, 2011

Church's child safeguarding body wants more power

The head of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCC) has called on the State to provide it with powers to compel bishops and other Church leaders to co-operate.

Ian Elliott backed a similar call by Dublin's Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for such powers of compellability.

An audit is currently underway into the country's 26 dioceses while similar audits of the other 162 religious orders, congregations and missionary societies will follow.

Mr Elliott said ''everyone wants the audits completed. Public inquiries are very slow and costly. It is not the best way of progressing this issue.'' This, he felt, ''would be in partnership between the State and the board''.

It would be ''great'', he said, if statutory compellability powers were extended to the board.

Full extent

According to the board's Review of Safeguarding Practice in the Catholic Church, the audit sets out ''to ascertain the full extent of all complaints or allegations, knowledge, suspicions or concerns'' of clerical child sex abuse in the period from January 1, 1975, to the present.

Its objective is ''to confirm how known allegations have been responded to and what the current arrangements for safeguarding children are'' in the relevant diocese or institution.

Six dioceses have been fully audited to date. 

It is hoped this will have been completed in all 26 dioceses by mid-2012. 

Bishop Philip Boyce of Raphoe and Bishop Colm O'Reilly of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise have revealed audits have taken place in their dioceses.

Mr Elliott recalled that when he went to investigate Cloyne he was presented with ''about 10 pieces of paper. It didn't take long to realise that these were different pieces lifted out of a file''. 

Some referred to other documents which had not been provided. Following a crisis meeting with Bishop of Cloyne John Magee and diocesan delegate Msgr Denis O'Callaghan, further files were produced.

''But it wasn't till later we discovered that some of the information given was false,'' Mr Elliott said.