Greg DalyThe final tranche of reports from the national safeguarding board was released on Wednesday, May 4, ahead of new guidelines for safeguarding practice and procedures being introduced.
Thirty bodies were reviewed in the final tranche, bringing to 164 the total number of reviews published by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church. Five orders still active in ministry and with some contact with children were reviewed under the full set of standards while the remaining 21 orders were assessed against smaller numbers 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.
Standards
“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.”
The reports revealed that 288 allegations were made against 90 priests, brothers or sisters in the reviewed bodies, leading to 10 criminal convictions. Barring one incident in 2013, all allegations related to the period between 1950 and 2002.