A NATIONAL audit by gardai of clerical sex abuse is expected to
reveal a huge volume of complaints against priests dating back 80 years
when it is completed within months.
The audit is being conducted by the gardai's sexual crime unit, in conjunction with the Health Service Executive, in the wake of the religious child abuse scandals revealed in the Ryan and Murphy reports.
Sources
said the audit was at a "very advanced" stage and could be completed in
two months.
It will count all allegations of sexual abuse against
priests "proven or otherwise" that were reported to gardai and health,
church and other authorities since the foundation of the State.
Gardai
began the massive trawl of the force's own records more than nine
months ago and have worked closely with the HSE.
They have unearthed
complaints against priests and religious dating back to the 1930s and
1940s, according to the source.
The audit may also shed light on
the response of the State authorities, which have been found wanting in
numerous inquiries into clerical abuse.
The Murphy Report on
clerical abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese blamed gardai for facilitating
the cover-up of clerical sex abuse by failing to adequately investigate.
It found that some gardai considered clergy to be outside the remit of An Garda Siochana.
One garda referred complaints against priests to the archdiocese, rather than investigating them.
The
garda sexual crime unit is investigating whether members of the force,
along with senior figures in the clergy, broke the law by shielding
child abusers.
However, it is understood that detectives are
struggling to find a relevant law that they may have broken, as most of
the alleged offences pre-date the existing legislation.
The
national audit of clerical abuse will attempt to establish, for the
first time, the scale of child sexual abuse by priests throughout the
country and over decades.
Given that several reports in recent
years have revealed alarming volumes of abuse in individual diocese, the
findings are likely to be shocking.
The Dublin Archdiocese revealed that child sex abuse allegations were made against 102 priests between January 1975 and 2004.
The
Ryan Report on the treatment of children in religious residential
institutions said there were more than 800 abusers in more than 200
Catholic institutions.
The more recent Cloyne Report examined
allegations of abuse against 19 priests, 15 of which should have been
reported to the authorities.
An investigation of clerical abuse in
the Donegal diocese of Raphoe by the church's own independent watchdog,
the National Body for Safeguarding Children, is expected to be
published shortly.
The National Board for Safeguarding Children,
the church's own child-protection body, is also conducting audits across
each diocese.
There was fury last month when it revealed that
some church authorities had withheld 292 complaints which should have
been reported to the audit.
In the year from April 2010 to March 2011,
they reported only 53 complaints, whereas the actual number of
complaints was 272.
Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald said that the audits could result in new inquiries into clerical abuse.