THE National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) in the Catholic Church has admitted there are gaps in the Church’s child protection guidelines that will have to be closed following the resignation of the Cloyne child protection delegate last weekend.The admission comes as a second woman revealed the delegate, Fr Bill Bermingham also showed her informal statement of abuse claims to the priest at the centre of the allegations.
As in the previous case, the file was given by Fr Bermingham to the accused priest and his solicitor before gardaí interviewed him.
After details of the file handover were published by the Irish Examiner last Friday, Fr Bermingham defended his actions robustly, declaring he was only complying with Church guidelines which state "details" of the complaint should be given to the accused. He resigned on Saturday.
Last night, the second woman accused him of an "enormous abuse of my trust": "What he did was nearly worse than what happened to me the first time.
"I did not wanted to discuss my abuse with a priest but I was persuaded to do this as part the process. I was told that this man could be trusted but I was screwed over."
NBSC chief executive Ian Elliott admitted there was a need for further clarification of how the guidelines should be applied, but insisted they were not fundamentally flawed.
"As a result of the review process I am currently engaged in, I hope to be in a position to offer that additional clarification," he said.
Last night the first woman to highlight Fr Bermingham’s actions said she was "shocked" that Mr Elliott did not find the guidelines fundamentally flawed and again questioned the real need for a statement to a delegate.
The NBSC said it has "no evidence" that child protection delegates in any other diocese were showing victim statements directly to accused priests.