The Supreme Court has today ruled on a dispute between
two Catholic organisations about who is responsible for paying
compensation to over 170 victims of alleged physical and sexual abuse at
a Yorkshire children's home.
The case involves the
Catholic diocese of Middlesbrough and the Catholic De La Salle Brothers
order, in respect of alleged systematic abuse of children going back
more than fifty years at the St William's children's care home and
school at Market Weighton.
It was ruled that the De La Salle Brothers
were "vicariously" (financially) liable for wrongdoing of the members of
the Order, even though they are not employees, despite the Order's
attempts to evade responsibility for this reason.
The
case has huge implications, potentially beyond the UK, but particularly
for the Catholic Church, where many of those responsible for child
abuse – such as "brothers" are not, technically, employees.
This
decision is likely to finally resolve another recent similar case
involving the Catholic diocese of Portsmouth, where the appeal court
ruled on vicarious liability in the same direction as the Supreme Court
has done today.
St William's took emotionally and
behaviourally disturbed boys, aged 10 to 16, referred by councils
largely from Yorkshire and the North East.
The former headmaster James
Carragher has twice been convicted of a series of indecent assaults,
buggery and taking photographs of young boys.
In 2004 he was sentenced
to 14 years in prison, having already served a seven-year sentence
imposed in 1993. The institution was closed down in 1992.
Lawyers for the victims have accused the Catholic church of delaying, or attempting to avoid, compensation payments.
Keith
Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society,
said: "This case lays bare the shameless and continuing evasion by the
hierarchy of the Catholic Church of paying compensation for the
horrendous abuse for which those acting in its name have been
responsible, and compounds the abuse suffered by victims. This case has
taken so long to resolve that some victims have died, relieving the
Church of paying them compensation. Even for those remaining, it goes
nowhere near repairing the lives ruined by this brutal abuse carried out
on an industrial scale by clerics on youngsters supposedly in their
care."
"I am told by a Yorkshire solicitor acting for
many of these victims that in every case the Church has fought, and
continues to fight, tooth and nail, to evade every penny of
compensation. This case is essentially a battle between two departments
of the Catholic Church. The Church has demonstrated by its actions that
it does not care one iota for the victims, nor for being seen to have
acted with compassion, far less decently. Otherwise it would have
resolved the case many years ago by paying the compensation centrally
from the Church's vast wealth and deciding in Rome how the cost was to
be apportioned. The Church's failure, clearly with
the complicity — if not the direct instructions — of Rome, to minimise
compensation (as in this case), and also to protect clerical abusers
from the criminal courts, as demonstrated most clearly in Ireland,
demonstrates that the only way that victims can be better protected in
future is by tightening up the criminal law. I
recommend that Parliament brings forward legislation to make it a
criminal offence not to disclose to the police all credible allegations
of child abuse and to preserve and furnish them with all available
evidence."