PSYCHOLOGIST DR Maureen Gaffney has described as “perversity on a
breathtaking scale” the fact that the Catholic Church’s Dublin Regional
Marriage Tribunal included two known clerical child sex abusers when it
was suggested that Tony Walsh also be appointed to it.
On December
6th last, Walsh was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment, four
suspended, for child sex abuse.
Chapter 19 of the Murphy report,
published before Christmas, dealt mainly with how church and State
authorities handled allegations against Tony Walsh.
He was described by
it as “probably the most notorious child sexual abuser to have come to
the attention of the [Murphy] commission”.
The report revealed
that in 1989 it was suggested that Walsh, then an admitted child sex
abuser, be appointed to the tribunal, which dealt mainly with
annulments.
This was not done but, as the Murphy report puts it,
there were then “two known abusers . . . in the regional marriage
tribunal . . .’’
Those were Fr Ivan Payne and a priest referred to as
“Fr Cicero” in the report.
Dr Gaffney, adjunct professor of psychology and society at UCD, told
The Irish Times : “I can’t even begin to fathom the reasoning’’
behind such appointments. It indicated that the marriage tribunal “was
regarded as an area of such low importance it did not matter if there
were depraved people there”, she said. There were, within the church,
“many areas of endeavour which were womanless and childless . . . some
of them areas of high status.’’
“As we know in Ireland of the
period, many marriages were annulled on sexual grounds,” she said. She
was appalled at “the idea of bringing in people with such problems
before people who had severe difficulties with their own sexuality . . .
I don’t think the church had any sense that the annulment process was
about human beings.”
The tribunal dealt mainly with applications for annulments from the Dublin archdiocese.
Its
judicial vicar, or chairman, in 1989 was the late Msgr Gerard Sheehy.
In autumn of 1989, according to Chapter 19, it was suggested (it does
not say by whom) to Msgr Sheehy “that he might take Fr Jovito [Tony
Walsh] into the tribunal”.
Msgr Sheehy declined “on the basis that Fr Jovito’s limited intellectual capacity might lead him to become frustrated”.
He
stated that a prison chaplaincy might be more suitable. The archdiocese
had by then extensive knowledge of Walsh’s abuse of children, going
back to 1978.
Ivan Payne was appointed to the tribunal in 1975.
The first complaint against him in 1981 concerned the abuse of Andrew
Madden. Msgr Sheehy and Archbishop Dermot Ryan were informed. In
September 1984 Payne was moved to Sutton.
In April 1995 Mr Madden
went public. By then, the archdiocese had received reports of
inappropriate behaviour by Payne in Sutton. In July 1995, two boys in
Sutton made complaints about Payne. Others also came forward.
Attempts
to remove Payne from the marriage tribunal were resisted by Msgr Sheehy
who argued it “would very likely be the final destruction of a good
priest . . .”
Still more complainants came forward.
In October 1995,
Payne resigned from the tribunal.
In June 1998, he was sentenced to six
years on charges arising from the abuse of 10 children.
He was laicised
in 2002.
Fr Cicero was a priest of Ossory diocese and began
working with the tribunal in the 1970s.
Complaints about his abuse of
young girls were first reported in 1986, despite which Msgr Sheehy
supported his continuing on the tribunal.
In 1999 he admitted
abusing “approximately 12 victims”.
In November 2000 he was removed from
the marriage tribunal.
Msgr Sheehy described it as “a shattering blow”.
So in January 2001, it was agreed Fr Cicero would be allowed do
unofficial work for the tribunal.
He died in 2002.
SIC: IT/IE