POWERS OF compellability should be extended by the State to the
Catholic Church child protection watchdog to ensure co-operation by
bishops and religious superiors, its chief executive has said.
An
audit by the church’s National Board for Safeguarding Children is
investigating child protection practices in the island’s 26 Catholic
dioceses.
It will then investigate the remaining 162 Catholic
institutions on the island run mainly by religious congregations.
Ian Elliott, board chief executive, told
The Irish Times “everyone wants the audits completed.
Public
inquiries are very slow and costly. It is not the best way of
progressing this issue.”
This, he felt, “would be in partnership between
the State and the board”.
It would be “great” if statutory
compellability powers were extended to the board as Archbishop Diarmuid
Martin said, he commented.
On RTÉ One’s Six One News last
Wednesday, Archbishop Martin warned that senior church figures who were
not prepared to be honest would only be “discovered” through an
“invasive” audit of child protection practices.
Currently the board is
dependent on “moral power” in ensuring co-operation.
Mr Elliott
agreed this had not worked in Cloyne diocese, where the board uncovered
evidence that child protection practices were “inadequate and in some
respects dangerous”.
This led to the remit of the Murphy commission
being extended to include Cloyne.
According to the board’s Review
of Safeguarding Practice in the Catholic Church, the audit sets out “to
ascertain the full extent of all complaints or allegations, knowledge,
suspicions or concerns” of clerical child sex abuse in the period from
January 1st, 1975, to the present.
Its objective is “to confirm how
known allegations have been responded to and what the current
arrangements for safeguarding children are” in the relevant diocese or
institution.
The audit “is dependent upon full and complete access
to all relevant documentation and information relating to the abuse of
children known to the individual church authorities.”
Six dioceses
have been fully audited to date.
It is hoped this will have been
completed in all 26 dioceses by mid-2012.
Bishop Philip Boyce of Raphoe
and Bishop Colm O’Reilly of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise have revealed audits
have taken place in their dioceses.
Mr Elliott recalled that when
he went to investigate Cloyne he was presented with “about 10 pieces of
paper. It didn’t take long to realise that these were different pieces
lifted out of a file”.
Some referred to other documents which had not
been provided.
Following a crisis meeting with Bishop of Cloyne John
Magee and diocesan delegate Msgr Denis O’Callaghan, further files were
produced.
“But it wasn’t till later we discovered that some of the information given was false,” Mr Elliott said.
Altogether, the Cloyne commission found there were 12,000 abuse files in Cloyne, most kept in Msgr O’Callaghan’s home.
Generally,
the board knows when it encounters honesty in conducting its audit, Mr
Elliott said, and there were procedures to encourage this. When such
honesty was not forthcoming the audit simply ended, he said.
Full details of the audit/review process are available at safeguarding.ie