Greg Daly
Religious bodies should cease financial and other support for members who have been found guilty of child sexual abuse, the head of the Church’s child protection board has said.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Teresa Devlin, CEO of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland, said “at some stage, once you know [a priest or brother] is guilty, then you do have to cut the ties, you cannot continue to pay for someone and at some stage the State has to take over with pensions”.
Ms Devlin acknowledged that there are difficult balances to be struck in this area, but said that while it is important to be compassionate and merciful it is also important not to send the wrong message to survivors of abuse.
She cited the example of a complainant who had recently told her of an alleged abuser whose accommodation is provided for the Church, saying “nobody is paying for mine”.
This view is arguably at odds with that of 2009’s report by Judge Yvonne Murphy into historical abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin. The Murphy report accepted that a diocesan and religious emphasis on the rehabilitation rather than punishment of an offender was “reasonable provided he is not at liberty to commit other abuses”.
Monitoring
It is largely by providing accommodation that dioceses and orders can monitor clergy with a history of abuse, and the report noted that the level of monitoring of clerical offenders, while unsatisfactory, was nonetheless “generally far greater than the limited or non-existent monitoring that is provided for non-clerical offenders”.
Ms Devlin’s comments come in the aftermath of the publication of a new set of standards and extensive guidelines on child protection in the Irish Church.
The standards and guidelines include new sections on care for complainants and for clergy and others about whom allegations have been made, emphasising the importance of the Church’s canonical procedures, which follow those of the State, being conducted in a fair and efficient fashion.