ORGANISATIONS SUPPORTING victims of childhood sexual abuse have
reported a high volume of calls for help over the weekend, following
publication of the Murphy report chapter about paedophile former priest
Tony Walsh.
Publication of the chapter was approved after Walsh,
who was previously jailed for sexually abusing six boys, was sentenced
to 16 years for abusing a further three victims.
In Rome, the Holy
See yesterday had no wish to comment on the previously redacted Murphy
Report chapter.
Senior Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi said: “I
have nothing to add to the comments made by the Archbishop of Dublin . .
.”
Labour education spokesman Ruairí Quinn has renewed his call
for the congregations to hand over the title deeds of their schools
while maintaining patronage.
This follows confirmation he received
in a parliamentary reply that Irish religious congregations have handed
over just €20 million of the €348 million promised last year following
publication of the Ryan report.
In addition, more than €26 million
remains outstanding from the original indemnity deal done with the
orders in 2002.
In Ballyfermot, where many of Walsh’s victims were
abused, Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin spoke on December 12th
in advance of the publication of chapter 19 and apologised to the people
of the parish.
One of the organisations supporting victims of
abuse, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said there had been a “steady
flow” of calls not just from victims of abuse but from the family
members and friends of victims.
Chief executive Ellen O’Malley
Dunlop said “some of the most harrowing calls actually have been from
parents of victims who didn’t believe their children when they told them
they had been abused.
“These parents are absolutely heartbroken.” In some of those cases “their children have taken their own lives”.
Maeve
Lewis, director of the One in Four organisation, said there had been “a
big increase” in calls on Friday. Ms Lewis said “a lot of people
calling were very upset and distressed and angry”.
The telephone
counselling service Connect was open over the weekend and experienced an
increase in calls.
In Rome, Vatican insiders said yesterday that
there was nothing very unusual about one of the most controversial
aspects of the chapter, namely that the Roman Rota (Vatican Appeal
Court) in 1994 initially partly overturned the Dublin canon law court’s
1993 ruling that Walsh should be laicised.
Canon law experts point
out that the Rota, then as now, is extremely reluctant to annul sacred
vows, be they marriage vows or be they a priest’s vows of ordination.
The court may have been guilty of seeing paedophilia as a “disease”,
comparable to alcoholism.
It may also have felt that Walsh would be more
controlled and supervised if he remained in the priesthood.
Whilst
the Murphy commission points to the scandal of the 17-year-long failure
of the Dublin Archdiocese to deal with Walsh, Pope Benedict, then
Cardinal Ratzinger, took only two months to have him laicised following
Cardinal Connell’s intervention with Pope John Paul II.
Archbishop
Martin, who served in the Vatican from 1976 to 2001, has also said any
awareness he had of clerical child sex abuse in Dublin while he was
abroad came from the media.
“The Archbishop [of Dublin] I knew
best was Archbishop Dermot Ryan when he was living in Rome, where he was
for a year before he died,” he said.
“He [Archbishop Ryan] never once
mentioned anything about abuse,” he recalled.
SIC: IT/IE