The horrors of Murphy Report

EDITORIAL

We have long been aware that priests have committed horrendous acts of sexual abuse against children but it has now been confirmed by the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin that some of the most senior figures in the Irish Catholic Church hierarchy, over a 30-year period, were aware of it and stood idly by.

The commission was established to report on the handling by Church and State authorities of a representative sample of allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse against clerics ministering in the Archdiocese of Dublin during the period from 1975 to 2004.
The 700-page report, compiled under the chairmanship of Ms Justice Yvonne Murphy, has been greeted with revulsion, shock and anger as it chronicles yet another trail of violated childhoods at the hands of men who were regarded as pillars of society. It also highlights a shocking lack of willingness on the part of gardaí top brass to properly investigate alleged sex crimes.
The Catholic Church and a former Garda Commissioner covered up abuse, according to the report. The priests may have been the abusers but the culture of deference to the Catholic Church often meant that many offenders were not pursued by the gardaí. In one case dating back to 1960, Scotland Yard informed former Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan that the chaplain of a children’s hospital had sent photographs of children in sexual positions to the UK to be developed.
Commissioner Costigan allowed the Church to investigate the case and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid concluded no crime had been committed.
The abdication of responsibilities by senior church men and gardaí in this and other cases gave licence to many paedophiles to continue their rampage of unspeakable crimes against young girls and boys. Proper action at the appropriate time would have saved perhaps several thousand children and their families a life-long burden of torment.
The commission has concluded that all four archbishops of Dublin, and many of the auxiliary bishops in the period under review, were aware of some complaints of child sexual abuse against priests. Not one of the archbishops reported his knowledge of child sexual abuse to the gardaí throughout the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s. It was not until 1995 that Archbishop Desmond Connell allowed the names of 17 priests about whom the archdiocese had received complaints to be given to the gardaí.
It is devastating for people in County Clare to have the name of the late Newmarket-on-Fergus born Archbishop Kevin McNamara linked with the scandal.
The report found that his decision, following legal advice, to take out of insurance in 1987 was an act proving knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost to the archdiocese.
Appointed to the position in November 1984, he restored priestly duties to Fr Bill Carney despite him having pleaded guilty to charges of child sexual abuse in 1983.
Archbishop McNamara, who died in April 1987, also promoted the notorious Fr Ivan Payne to the position of Vice-Officialis of the Marriage Tribunal despite the previous refusal of Archbishop Dermot Ryan to do so. The archdiocese had been aware since 1981 of a complaint of sexual abuse of a Dublin boy against the priest, who in 1998 was convicted and jailed for indecent assault in respect of 10 victims.
The Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray, who served as an auxiliary bishop in Dublin from 1982 to 1996, was also strongly criticised by the commission.
The report notes that he did not deal properly with the suspicions and concerns that were expressed to him in relation to Fr Tom Naughton in Wicklow.
“When, a short time later, factual evidence of Fr Naughton’s abusing emerged in another parish, Bishop Murray’s failure to reinvestigate the earlier suspicions was inexcusable,” it is stated.
While there have been calls for him to step down, Bishop Murray has said it’s up to the people of the diocese, which includes parishes in South-East Clare, and his priests to decide his future.
Far from happy with some of their responses to the report, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin said that those bishops named in the report, but no longer serving in Dublin, could not tailor their responses to people in their current dioceses. He is due to write to Bishop Murray and the other bishops who served in Dublin to make clear his views.
In an RTÉ Prime Time interview on Tuesday night, he said what bishops did and did not do failed people in Dublin and they owe them a response.
The Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh is to issue a formal apology to victims of clerical sexual abuse over comments he made in a national radio programme on Monday on calls for the resignation of Bishop Murray. Victim support groups had criticised his failure to back calls for Bishop Murray to resign. On RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Bishop Walsh said calls for the resignation of Dr Murray were based on a “gross misreading” of the Dublin Diocesan Report and warned against a desire “to get a head on a plate”.
Hopefully, the horrors revealed in the Murphy Report and various other investigations, and perhaps even some still to come, will never be repeated.
The circumstances and environment, which allowed paedophile priests to run riot in Irish society, have changed radically in recent years in response to reports about other dioceses, industrial schools and orphanages.
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has expressed a determination to deal in the strongest possible terms with anybody involved in child abuse.
“The bottom line is this: a collar will protect no criminal,” he declared at the publication of the report.
He also said both he and the Garda Commissioner regretted profoundly that An Garda Síochána had not pursued allegations appropriately in some cases in the past. Any garda who obstructed the investigation of a perpetrator “should be prosecuted and should have been prosecuted”, he said.
There should be cross-party support for proposals to strengthen child protection measures and to provide a statutory framework to allow bodies to share information pertaining to deviant sexual behaviour with the relevant authorities.