On the first day of his audit of rhe Sacred Heart Missionaries, the head of the Church’s child protection watchdog yelled ‘stop’.In less than 24 hours on the job, he had realised that there was a blatant disregard for the Church’s child protection rules within the order.
Not only were complaints not being passed on to the gardaí and HSE, but confessions of abuse were not being passed on these authorities. In some cases, a priest had confessed to abusing several more children yet these victims were never contacted by the MSC hierarchy.
A culture existed whereby abuse complaints, despite the Ferns, Cloyne, Murphy and Ryan report, were being "dealt with in a covert way".
"The society failed to take action to protect vulnerable young children and had allowed those who caused harm to them to avoid being held accountable by statutory authorities," yesterday’s report said.
The report also highlighted how the day after Senator Mark Daly made his speech last July to the Seanad denouncing the order’s safeguarding practices, the MSC issued a press release saying they had reported all complaints to the statutory authorities. The audit showed how this statement was incorrect. However, those issuing the release are understood to have believed the statement to be true.
The audit revealed how important documentation around allegations was missing, including any written records of telephone conversations about the complaints between the MSC and its superior general in Rome.
Neither the Vatican nor Irish authorities had found it necessary to record or document these conversations. The investigation revealed how complaints had been made against 17 MSC priests and 9 of these had confessed to these crimes and more. One of the confessors even went so far as to describe the type of abuse and its frequency.
The board said that a number of allegations came from former pupils at Carrignavar Boarding School, which was then run by MSC. Of the 17 alleged perpetrators, six of them worked at Carrignavar at some point.
There were three Carrignavar teachers whose names repeatedly cropped up. They taught there for several years.
Another priest taught at Carrignavar before moving to a MSC boarding school in the UK where he allegedly abused. He was then sent to a diocese in the Midlands where he abused again. The diocese reported the allegations and he was convicted.
However, it wasn’t only the statutory authorities that the MSC wanted to keep in the dark.
Other members of the order were misled, under-informed and dioceses weren’t told of a new priest’s past record if he was transferring to them. No effort was made whatsoever to protect communities from known offenders.
The culture of concealment that pervaded the MSC was evident in their record keeping too.
Despite being meticulous record keepers elsewhere, "gaps" were commonplace in the order’s files. For instance, there was no records explaining why a priest taken out of ministry after abuse allegation was suddenly re-instated.
Victims were treated with utter disdain when they made their complaint. A number self-harmed as a result, another killed himself and in a suicide note blamed abuse by an MSC priest. This disregard for victims was systematic according to yesterday’s report: "There is reference within the records to the need to respond robustly to any allegation and communicate a willingness to resist any claims made by victims... It contributed to a sense of intimidation being felt by at least one victim who was advised that legal action would be initiated if he persisted with his allegation."
In the words of Ian Elliott: "It is difficult to express adequately the failure of this society to effectively protect vulnerable children".