Greg DalyThe final tranche of reports from the national safeguarding board has been released, in advance of the introduction of new guidelines to aid Church bodies in safeguarding practice and procedures.
Thirty bodies were reviewed in the final tranche, with five orders still active in ministry and with some contact with children being reviewed under the full set of standards and four with no current contact with children but which had had allegations made against them in the past being assessed against a smaller set of standards. The remaining 21 orders were assessed against a limited number of standards.
“The vast majority of these reports are positive and reflect orders that have taken on the goals of child safeguarding and made it integral to what they do,” said board CEO Teresa Devlin.
“Unfortunately, in two cases, the Salvatorians and the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, we have seen little evidence that the standards have been properly implemented,” she added, continuing, “The Salvatorians were particularly poor in relation to the monitoring of an accused priest. And in a number of cases poor record-keeping took place.”
Allegations
The reports revealed that 288 allegations were made against 90 priests, brothers or sisters in the reviewed bodies, leading to 10 criminal convictions. Aside from one incident in 2013, the allegations related to the period between 1950 and 2002.
The tranche brings to 164 to total number of reviews of safeguarding practice and procedures the NBSCCCI (National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland) has published about Church bodies that come under its authority.
The few exceptions who have not yet been reviewed include some religious orders without ministry to children and whose exclusively female memberships are aging and declining in numbers, while reviews of four religious orders currently subject to investigation under the Northern Ireland Historical Inquiry cannot be produced publicly until after the inquiry has reported its findings, which will happen next year.