LEGAL ISSUES: THERE WAS no law available in 2005
under which Bishop John Magee could have been prosecuted for not
reporting an instance of child abuse, legal sources have argued.
It
was reported over the last weekend that the Director of Public Prosecutions
had decided not to charge Bishop Magee with an offence after he received
a file from the Garda on his failure to co-operate with a Garda
investigation.
The DPP refused to comment on this.
In
2005 Bishop Magee conducted an interview with Fr Brendan Wrixon during
which Wrixon admitted sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy. He was
convicted and received an 18-month sentence for gross indecency, which
was suspended.
In a report for diocesan records, Bishop Magee said
Wrixon had denied the offence, while he and Msgr O’Callaghan did not
co-operate with the Garda investigation in 2006, according to the Cloyne
report.
However, in a report to the Vatican, Bishop Magee said Wrixon
had admitted the abuse.
An offence of “reckless endangerment”,
where it would be an offence to leave a child in a situation of danger
when a person knew someone was a threat to children and was in contact
with them, was created in 2006, but Wrixon’s offence was committed in
2005.
The 1997 Criminal Law Act makes it an offence to conceal an
“arrestable offence”, but legal sources said that this applied
to those who did so for gain.
Section 8 of the Act states: “Where
a person has committed an arrestable offence, any other person who,
knowing or believing that the offence or some other arrestable offence
has been committed and that he or she has information which might be of
material assistance in securing the prosecution or conviction of an
offender for it, accepts or agrees to accept for not disclosing that
information any consideration . . . shall be guilty of an offence and
shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term
not exceeding three years.”
The legal source said the offence lay
in the taking of a reward or “consideration” for the non-disclosure of
the offence, not the non-disclosure itself.
The source also said this
referred to “an arrestable offence”, carrying a minimum sentence of five
years.
Many child abuse offences do not carry a five-year minimum
sentence, therefore are not “arrestable” under the law, according to the
source.