Australia now has two inquiries into the sexual abuse of children by clergy. Will they be the circuit-breaker that triggers the changes so many Catholics want or will the church retreat behind a wall of obstruction and concealment?
Pope Benedict XVI with Catholic clergy at World Youth Day in Sydney where he apologised for sex abuse by clergy.
CARDINAL Bernard Law of Boston was the first, and so far only, archbishop to resign over public revulsion at his handling of child sex abuse by his clergy. Named in hundreds of lawsuits, subject of dramatic public protests, and publicly rejected by 58 of his priests, Law resigned in December 2002.
Pope John Paul II's response, widely seen as a gesture of blatant contempt for Boston's faithful, was to appoint Law archpriest of one of Rome's four great basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore.
The message to the disgraced cardinal was clear: ''You are one of us, and we will look after you.'' To many inside and outside the church, protecting the church and its clerics has always been the Vatican's priority - and, they say, it still is.
John Paul II also protected and promoted notorious abusers such as Marcial Maciel, founder the of Legionaries of Christ movement. Indeed, the Pope's first response to the expanding American crisis was to blame a ''hostile'' media, and his fallback position was to claim clergy abuse was purely an anglophone issue.
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The current Pope, Benedict XVI, was accused of obstructing justice after it emerged that in 2001 as John Paul's right-hand man he wrote to every bishop requiring them to report every abuse case to his department and to keep it secret.
Australia now has two important inquiries into the sexual abuse of children by clergy and others, and how the churches responded: a well-established Victorian parliamentary investigation and a royal commission, which has yet to begin hearings. The Catholic Church has promised full co-operation with both, but critics - including many who have given evidence to the Victorian inquiry - are sceptical.
The church is always full of good promises, but its record - as police in Victoria and New South Wales have complained - is one of obstruction, obfuscation, and concealment. Just this month, the Catholic Church in Germany cancelled an independent inquiry into child abuse by clergy, designed to restore its tarnished credibility, after the investigators demanded to see the church's abuse files.
Last September, Robert Finn of Kansas City became the world's first bishop convicted of concealing child abuse. He was sentenced to two years' probation, which was then suspended. Victim advocates had hoped the Vatican would show it took the abuse crisis seriously by disciplining him, but Rome simply ignored it. Bishop Finn continues to head the diocese.
In Poland, the old game of blaming and intimidating victims, concealing crimes and moving predatory priests from parish to parish continues, according to a revealing report last year by the authoritative US journal National Catholic Reporter. The church said that not only did bishops have no obligation to compensate victims, in fact the church itself was the victim.
This history is why witnesses to the Victorian inquiry are sceptical about church co-operation. Although bishops claim they have local autonomy, in fact the Vatican keeps a tight rein and ranks canon (church) law above state law, the witnesses said.
Former priest Phil O'Donnell told the inquiry last week that key documents had likely been shredded or moved, as has happened elsewhere. ''Good luck [trying to get them] if they are at the Vatican,'' he said.
A succession of witnesses has told the Victorian inquiry that only structural change at the Vatican will accomplish more than window dressing within the Australian church. And, they say, if the Vatican won't do it, then the state must.
Inquiry chairwoman Georgie Crozier seems to agree. When the inquiry resumed for 2013 last Wednesday, she said the committee already had enough evidence to start forming views on what their report would cover and the kind of recommendations it would make.
The inquiry is due to report on April 30, and, although it will almost certainly need an extension, the members are believed to be eager to allow the government time to consider legislative changes this year.
The inquiry has already proved fruitful, airing many of the issues in a public forum, giving victims confidence to tell their stories, and producing a series of explosive headlines and damaging testimony. All this helped bring the long-sought Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, announced in December and due to start hearings in the next few months.
Although the royal commission has broad terms of reference that will doubtless uncover appalling systemic abuse in state orphanages and other places, no one doubts that the main focus will be the Catholic Church.
Patrick Parkinson, an expert in child protection at Sydney University, told the inquiry that Catholic priests abused children at six times the rate of all other churches put together, while RMIT's Desmond Cahill said that one in 15 Catholic priests in Melbourne was a child abuser.
Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton told the inquiry the church deliberately hindered and obstructed police investigations of paedophile priests, even when the police had search warrants, and had not reported a single incident to police. This is despite the church admitting that it had upheld 618 cases of child abuse in Victoria in the past 16 years, though most happened much earlier. Several witnesses suggested it was improper that the church should investigate criminal abuse itself.
Cynicism over the church's willingness to surrender documents was fuelled by the embarrassment over Father ''F'', when Sydney Archbishop George Pell claimed that the abuser had not explicitly admitted his behaviour in a 1992 meeting with three senior priests. The church files contained no record of these admissions, but - embarrassingly for Cardinal Pell - court papers did. The priests had not reported him to police, as required.
Peter Johnstone, president of progressive group Catholics for Renewal, was one of many witnesses to suggest the church could not be reformed from within. He said the church was governed by an ancient and anachronistic system vesting power in men who were celibate, often socially isolated, usually old, unable to communicate with the faithful, and under the supreme control of a papal monarch who demanded blind obedience.
He found it significant that although many church leaders have apologised for sexual abuse by clergy, there has never been an apology for the church's ''own betrayals of trust. [The Pope] regrets the deeds of clergy and damage to the church, but he does not mention or apologise for the many self-protective and immoral decisions in concealing those deeds.''
The royal commission has important advantages, especially in cross-examining witnesses and testing evidence. But, according to anti-abuse campaigner Anthony Foster, the state inquiry might be even more important for Victorian victims because most of the laws that he says must be changed are state laws.
''Much of what the Catholic Church has done has been terrible, but some of it has been done within the framework of the laws of our society, and it's the state laws that need to be changed to ensure they can't act in such an immoral way in the future.''
Foster says one urgent change is to the Property Trust Act, which the church has used to claim it does not exist as a body that can be sued. ''How many successful cases have there been against the Catholic Church in Victoria? Zero. And that beggars belief when you look at WorkCover or the road traffic situation. Their victims are able to access compensation, and these cases often lead to institutional changes.''
He also cites the difference between church and companies, whereby company CEOs are responsible at law for what their predecessors have done, but bishops are not. Another vital change, he says, is the need for outside scrutiny of the church's internal processes. The ombudsman, auditor-general and freedom-of-information laws provide checks on the state government, but there are none for the church. ''These things could be changed very quickly if the government took a mind to it.''
Lawyer and advocate Judy Courtin is completing a PhD about the church's own internal processes, Towards Healing and the Melbourne Response. She says both are problematic because they cause secondary abuse and trauma for the victims, compensation is ''paltry'' compared with that awarded by the courts, and the criminal matters they investigate should be dealt with by police.
As Fairfax reported on Wednesday, the Victorian inquiry committee is likely to suggest a mandatory reporting requirement - but to police, rather than the Department of Human Services, the authority to which other professionals report suspicions.
The church has already accepted in its submission to the inquiry that some form of mandatory reporting is inevitable, and proposes a form in which the victim's identity can be kept secret if the victim wishes it. The committee is also likely to recommend extending the statute of limitations because it often takes decades before sex-abuse victims can admit what happened to them.
It is likely to consider vicarious liability to halt the church argument that a priest is not an employee, and to introduce - as in NSW - a specific law making it a crime to conceal sex abuse.
Meanwhile, the church is in a difficult position as accusations fly and it has not yet been able to reply at the state inquiry. It has appointed a Truth, Justice and Healing Council led by laypeople to co-ordinate its response to the royal commission, but that is separate from the Victorian inquiry.
CEO Francis Sullivan is blunt that the church mismanaged the issue until the Towards Healing protocol, introduced in 1996, improved and systematised its procedure, but even now it must recognise it still has much to improve. He promises that the church will ''embrace'' the commission, and will make all documents available.
He has had no contact, let alone instructions, from the Vatican.
According to a senior priest who did not want to be named, ''the fundamental dilemma in these sexual abuse cases is the assumption that silence equals a cover-up. A cover-up is destroying documents, telling lies. I'm confident our bishops didn't do that. Mostly the complaints were vague and they were faced with a denial and a victim who explicitly didn't want to go to the police.''
According to Jesuit priest Michael Kelly, this will be a difficult year for the Australian church, ''maybe the worst in its history''; yet he also thinks the two inquiries may be the circuit-breaker that triggers many of the changes for which so many Catholics long. ''It will put a nail in the coffin of clericalism, that 'them and us' culture that fosters an elitism which is the very opposite of Christian discipleship,'' Kelly wrote in the online journal Eureka Street earlier this month.
''This period will reveal what the Church is and isn't. It isn't a command and control army or a football team doing what the captain and coach tell it to do. It is a community of faith at the service of the world.''
Francis Sullivan agrees. ''It's important for everyone to realise that the processes that bring out the truth are painful, but out of the ashes grow hope.''
Barney Zwartz is religion editor.
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Former brother wins order to challenge sex assaults trial
A FORMER Christian Brother facing 138 charges of indecent assault on young boys dating back to 1978 has been given High Court permission to seek an order stopping his trial because of a delay in prosecuting him.
James (Seamus) Treacy (70) with an address at Ashton Close, Swords, Dublin, says his right to a fair and expeditious trial has been prejudiced because of the delay.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Peart said he was satisfied to grant leave to bring a challenge, having read the papers in the case since the application was made on Monday. He said his order was to act as a stay on the prosecution. The matter is to come back before the High Court in March.
The court heard Mr Treacy was a former teacher at a Christian Brothers primary school in Sexton Street, Limerick.
Last June, he appeared on the charges in Limerick District Court. He faces one batch of charges of indecent assault relating to four boys between 1978 and 1979 and a second batch relating to 13 others between 1978 and 1981.
He claimed his ability to defend himself had been prejudiced in a number of ways, including the fact that a fellow teacher who could have given evidence on his behalf has died.
- Tim Healy
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Former priest guilty of indecent assaults
January 30, 2013
CONOR KANE
Wed, Jan 30, 2013
A former religious brother and priest was in custody last night after being found guilty of 13 counts of indecently assaulting a schoolboy over 30 years ago. Con Desmond (77), with an address at Woodlands, Kilrush Road, Ennis, Co Clare, had denied 13 charges of indecently assaulting a boy at the St Stephen’s De La Salle national school in Waterford city, between 1977 and 1980.
After a five-day trial, a jury of seven women and five men returned majority 10-2 guilty verdicts on all 13 charges at Waterford circuit court yesterday.
The complainant, who was aged eight, nine and 10 at the time of the alleged offences, told the trial that Con Desmond – then known as Br Cornelius – abused him a number of times in the principal’s office of the school.
The accused showed no emotion in court as the verdicts were read out, while the victim wept quietly and held hands with his partner and other family members.
Sentencing was adjourned until February 19th to allow medical evidence and character evidence to be prepared. Mr Desmond was remanded in custody in the meantime.
The court heard he had a previous conviction for a “similar-type offence” which dated back to the same period, and for which he had received a suspended prison sentence.
Judge Donagh McDonagh turned down an application for bail until the sentencing hearing, ruling that the convictions were “very, very serious, given the relative status of the injured party and the guilty party”.
Br Cornelius served as headmaster of the St Stephen’s De La Salle school from 1977 to 1984. He later became a priest and worked in the diocese of Killaloe.
During the trial last week, the victim told the court that the first incident of indecent assault happened one morning in 1977 after he had cycled to school in the rain and got wet. He was sent to the principal’s office, where his clothes were removed to dry on the radiator, and Br Cornelius went on to indecently assault him.
The other instances of abuse happened on Saturdays between 1978 and 1980, the victim said, when Br Cornelius asked him to come into school to help out with cleaning.
According to the victim, Br Cornelius told him he was a “good boy” and his “buddy” and the victim told the court he felt special and that he’d been chosen by Br Cornelius to help with the school cleaning.
He was also “very scared,” however, and said the abuse physically hurt him and made him feel uncomfortable. When asked why he didn’t tell his parents or anyone else about what was happening, until he reported the matter to gardaí in 2006, he said the school headmaster wasn’t a person to be questioned at the time. “You don’t disrespect priests or people in authority or guards or whatever.” The trial heard the victim is taking a civil case against Desmond, and against the board of management of the St Stephen’s De La Salle School and against the De La Salle order. Following the victim’s initial complaint in 2006, Desmond was arrested in 2007 – by appointment at Tipperary Garda station – and interviewed by detectives. When the allegations were put to him, he said they were “total imagination”, “total fabrication” and “totally false”.
FIONA Doyle may feel that she did not receive justice on Monday when her abusive father walked free from court on bail, but it is important that she knows that she has been vindicated, not only by the courts but by the whole country.
Judge Carney imposed a 12-year sentence on her father, Patrick O'Brien, who admitted to a decade of abuse and rape, with nine years suspended. He has to serve three years, pending appeal, and was given bail pending that appeal.
We are all aware of who the guilty party is. Fiona has taken the brave step to speak up and place the shame and guilt at the feet of her father and what he chooses to do with that is his problem. He does not deserve another ounce of anyone's time. Fiona, you have suffered enough pain and injustice and you should be feeling a great sense of pride.
Fiona's actions have prevented further abuse by this man. The whole country now knows about him and she is free to reclaim her life. Abuse can only survive if we continue the silence, empowering the abusers with our secrecy. As a society we need to acknowledge our culture of silence and our resistance to confronting anything uncomfortable.
Although we may be feeling outraged about this case, it may be better to focus on what we as individuals can do. We need to educate ourselves on the impacts of sexual abuse which would help us support those who have been victims of these types of crimes.
Expecting the system to resolve our issues, ease our pain and find solutions is not realistic and ultimately it is disempowering.
As children, my sisters and I were abused by our father for many years. No one stepped in to save us and we feel many systems let us down throughout our lives, including education, religious institutions, health and justice. It took us many years to recover, to reclaim our lives and to take responsibility for our own healing.
This was in no way a quick or easy journey. However, it has been the most rewarding journey we have ever taken.
It took time to let go of the outcome, of our desire for justice, of our disappointment at being excluded by the justice system throughout the court process. On the day our father appeared in court for sentencing, based on our stories, our lives, we were informed that there were too many of us to be allowed in the court. So we are aware of the frustration involved.
Furthermore, the option of waiving anonymity was not available to us at the time and whilst this is appropriate for many, we believed keeping his name out of the paper was further protecting him.
Our anger drove us for a long time, but through talking and writing we realised it was hurting us and not him. Fiona may not yet feel vindicated, that will take time, but for us the most important thing arising from our court experience was that finally we were believed. We hope Fiona will eventually come to this understanding too.
Victims of abuse are often confused about how they feel towards their abuser. They may love them, not want to cause them hurt or pain, especially if the abuser was a family member, and possibly protect them.
Victims can also be stuck in anger and vengeance, focusing their energies on how to punish their abusers.
We believe the only way forward is to encourage victims to speak up and speak out. Tell your story and begin to build a life for yourself. Take control over what happens moving forward. Give attention to your own healing. The abuser has taken enough and does not deserve any more. Now that you have broken the silence you can begin to understand the full impact the abuse has had on how you feel about yourself and your place in the world.
And for those of you who know someone you suspect has been abused, offer a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, and a non-judgmental place to think.
Fiona has been incredibly brave in speaking out, waiving her anonymity. In this society, that's incredibly difficult. But we should ask ourselves, why are we so surprised by her actions? We wouldn't consider her particularly courageous for reporting her bag stolen, or her bike robbed. She was the victim, she was not responsible. She should carry no blame or guilt.
We should never stop being shocked at the horrors of abuse. But in order to move forward we must begin the conversations, educate ourselves on how abuse impacts on victims' lives and those around them.
Victims need to understand that speaking up is vital if they are ever going to leave their abuse behind. They need to be given the clear message that they are not responsible and it is not their shame to hold.
Joyce, June and Paula Kavanagh are the co-authors, with Marian Quinn, of 'Click Click', the true story of their sexual abuse by their father from a young age. See www.healingthrough-hopeandhumour.com for all the podcasts.
Defunct Protestant care homes were included in the State redress scheme for victims of child abuse because the Department of Health and Children knew there would be no claims from them, newly obtained documents reveal.
Emails between officials in the department in the past decade, which have just come available to the Sunday Independent, show that a number of Protestant care homes were included because they knew there would be no claims from centres which "operated in the 1800s".
The documentation released is part of a legal case that abuse victims are preparing to take against the State.
The emails date from 2003 when the then Fianna Fail-led Government was under severe pressure to widen the scope of the clerical abuse redress scheme which has now exceeded €1.36bn.
According to documents released, officials included Mrs Smyly's Homes for Necessitous Children on the grounds there would be no claims from those institutions. One official wrote to his colleague: "I would be inclined to include them in the schedule as they were used as residential centres for children. I think it is safe to assume that there will be no applications for those centres which operated in the 1800s!"
Protestant abuse victims at the former Bethany Home have said the revelation shows a "highly cynical" move by officials to include defunct Protestant homes for "purely optical reasons" while institutions that would have resulted in claims to the State continue to be omitted.
Derek Leinster, chairman of the Bethany Home Survivors Group, said the documents showed clearly how their rights as citizens had continually been denied by the State.
"Why were defunct homes like the Mrs Smyly's Homes included when Bethany Home, which certainly qualified under the State's own criteria for abuse, has been omitted and remains outside the scheme today?" he said.
"It is a disgrace. All we want is justice. The Catholic homes are all included yet Protestant homes like Bethany remain ignored. Why?"
Responding to queries from the Sunday Independent, the Department of Education denied that Bethany Home was excluded from the redress scheme on religious grounds.
"Any allegations that Bethany Home was excluded from the redress scheme on religious grounds are not true. While the inclusion of Bethany Home was considered, it was not included within the redress scheme," a spokeswoman for Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said.
"Minister Quinn met with Bethany Survivors Group on May 24, 2011. He subsequently reviewed the papers on the home, and having taken all the circumstances into account found no basis to revisit the decision not to include the home within the redress scheme."
Mr Leinster and other Bethany Home survivors of abuse have also been critical of Church of Ireland leaders over their response to their calls for compensation.
However, a spokesman for the Church of Ireland said Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson remains supportive of their efforts.
"Archbishop Jackson met a number of former residents of Bethany Home shortly after taking up office," he said.
"The archbishop expressed his concern for former residents and relayed that he had written to the Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn encouraging him to re-examine as a matter of urgency the group's appeal to include Bethany Home in the State redress scheme. Archbishop Jackson continues to be supportive of the Bethany Home Survivors Group's efforts."
Defunct Protestant care homes were included in the State redress scheme for victims of child abuse because the Department of Health and Children knew there would be no claims from them, newly obtained documents reveal.
Emails between officials in the department in the past decade, which have just come available to the Sunday Independent, show that a number of Protestant care homes were included because they knew there would be no claims from centres which "operated in the 1800s".
The documentation released is part of a legal case that abuse victims are preparing to take against the State.
The emails date from 2003 when the then Fianna Fail-led Government was under severe pressure to widen the scope of the clerical abuse redress scheme which has now exceeded €1.36bn.
According to documents released, officials included Mrs Smyly's Homes for Necessitous Children on the grounds there would be no claims from those institutions. One official wrote to his colleague: "I would be inclined to include them in the schedule as they were used as residential centres for children. I think it is safe to assume that there will be no applications for those centres which operated in the 1800s!"
Protestant abuse victims at the former Bethany Home have said the revelation shows a "highly cynical" move by officials to include defunct Protestant homes for "purely optical reasons" while institutions that would have resulted in claims to the State continue to be omitted.
Derek Leinster, chairman of the Bethany Home Survivors Group, said the documents showed clearly how their rights as citizens had continually been denied by the State.
"Why were defunct homes like the Mrs Smyly's Homes included when Bethany Home, which certainly qualified under the State's own criteria for abuse, has been omitted and remains outside the scheme today?" he said.
"It is a disgrace. All we want is justice. The Catholic homes are all included yet Protestant homes like Bethany remain ignored. Why?"
Responding to queries from the Sunday Independent, the Department of Education denied that Bethany Home was excluded from the redress scheme on religious grounds.
"Any allegations that Bethany Home was excluded from the redress scheme on religious grounds are not true. While the inclusion of Bethany Home was considered, it was not included within the redress scheme," a spokeswoman for Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said.
"Minister Quinn met with Bethany Survivors Group on May 24, 2011. He subsequently reviewed the papers on the home, and having taken all the circumstances into account found no basis to revisit the decision not to include the home within the redress scheme."
Mr Leinster and other Bethany Home survivors of abuse have also been critical of Church of Ireland leaders over their response to their calls for compensation.
However, a spokesman for the Church of Ireland said Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson remains supportive of their efforts.
"Archbishop Jackson met a number of former residents of Bethany Home shortly after taking up office," he said.
"The archbishop expressed his concern for former residents and relayed that he had written to the Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn encouraging him to re-examine as a matter of urgency the group's appeal to include Bethany Home in the State redress scheme. Archbishop Jackson continues to be supportive of the Bethany Home Survivors Group's efforts."
- DANIEL McCONNELL Chief Reporter
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Ireland Fund honours former law student for Magdalene laundries work
January 16, 2013
MARK HENNESSY
Studying law in University College Dublin, Killarney-born Maeve O’Rourke left for a year in Minnesota in the United States to study human rights, a passion for the 26-year-old since she was a teenager.
There, she got a job as a law clerk with the University of Minnesota’s internationally regarded human rights centre. Soon, she was helping lawyers involved in preparing the defence for detainees held by the US military in Guantánamo.
Facing Republicans’ claims in the US Senate that waterboarding is not torture, O’Rourke strove to show it was illegal in US and international law.
Returning to UCD to finish her final undergraduate year “with a greater passion” for human rights, O’Rourke was soon off again once the law degree was safely secured, this time to Harvard to complete her master’s.
There, she read the Ryan report into decades of abuse in Ireland’s industrial schools, though she soon noticed that the girls and women held often for decades in the Magdalene laundries had been excluded.
Late one evening, she visited internationally celebrated lawyer Catharine MacKinnon, an International Criminal Court adviser, to voice her concerns. “She said to me, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’”
‘Compelling and devastating’
Since then, O’Rourke, now a pupil-barrister in London, has heeded the advice, becoming involved in the Justice for Magdalene group – work that led to her being honoured by the Ireland Fund of Great Britain last night for gathering “accurate, compelling and often devastating testimony”.
During schooldays in Kerry, she had studied Máiréad Ní Ghráda’s 1965 book An Triall, which traces the life of a young single mother in the west of Ireland made pregnant by the local primary school teacher and shunned by her community afterwards.
She saw the 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters, but “it had never actually hit me that this was so real, so pervasive and so horrific, or that so many women alive who had gone through this were still alive, yet we hadn’t done anything about this”.
Working with Boston College professor Jim Smith, O’Rourke prepared a legal submission in 2009 rejecting the State’s declaration that it was not responsible for the Magdalene laundries and therefore not liable.
“Jim had evidence that the courts had been directly involved in referring women and girls to laundries; there had been official policies that so-called second-time offenders would be detained there,” she said.
“The State had had its laundry washed there. We knew from Ryan that girls had ended up there directly from industrial schools and there was a very clear knowledge. It all meant that the State was well aware of what was happening in the laundries.
“The State’s acknowledged failures to regulate, inspect and monitor actually amounted to gross and systematic violations of those women and girls’ human rights under human rights instruments that existed way back then.”
‘Violation of obligations’
“It was a violation of obligations to prevent slavery, forced labour and servitude,” she said.
Having arrived in London, O’Rourke gathered testimony from former Magdalene inmates, learning that gardaí brought some back after escape bids.
“I was shocked by the age of the women when they were sent in. They were only girls. The youngest I met was 14 but we have as a group met women who were sent in as young as 11,” she said.
Decades on, some are still afraid to travel to Ireland. Others quit after a day or so if they come back.
“They have this fear of being caught and put back in, as they put it. Yes, they know it is not rational, but it is the effect of the trauma.”
Next week, Senator Martin McAleese’s report will go to the Government, followed by publication three weeks later.
“What we want to see is the Government preparing to apologise to the women and to make what amends it can for pensions, an apology and services,” Ms O’Rourke said.
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Authority knew about illegal adoptions
January 14, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
By Conall Ó Fátharta
The Adoption Authority was alerted to the activities of a Monaghan GP —recently exposed as arranging illegal adoptions in the 1970s — as far back as 2005.
Dr Irene Creedon, who ran a GP surgery in Monaghan and has since died, was reported in various media outlets last week as helping to arrange illegal adoptions in the 1970s.
However, it has since emerged that the Adoption Rights Alliance and its predecessor Adoption Ireland were aware of the suspicions around Dr Creedon for many years and had warned the Adoption Board and its successor the Adoption Authority about her activities as far back as 2005.
In a redacted letter dated Dec 2005 seen by the Irish Examiner, Adoption Ireland wrote to the Adoption Board enclosing information about an illegal adoption through St Patrick’s Guild adoption agency. It is believed Dr Creedon was involved in this adoption.
In another redacted letter, this time sent in May 2010 by the Adoption Rights Alliance, Dr Creedon is directly named as being at the centre of an illegal adoption — again arranged through St Patrick’s Guild.
St Patrick’s Guild has long been known to have facilitated an unknown number of illegal adoptions over a number of decades and has admitted to the practice in letters seen by the Irish Examiner. Despite this, it was the very first adoption agency accredited to operate legally under the Adoption Act 2010.
In the 2010 letter to the AAI, the Adoption Rights Alliance call on the authority to de-register St Patrick’s Guild and to inspect its files as well as seizing the files of Dr Creedon.
The Adoption Authority declined to respond to questions put to it concerning the activities Dr Creedon
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Up to 100 'illegal adoptions' uncovered
January 13, 2013
Email
CARL O'BRIEN
State authorities have uncovered about 100 cases of children who were born to unmarried women and may have been illegally transferred to adoptive parents as recently as the 1970s.
These informal adoptions were conducted outside the law and have left the children in circumstances where it may be impossible to trace their real birth parents.
In many cases the children are believed to have been given at birth to other families who then falsely registered these children as their own.
Gardaí have investigated whether adoption agencies and doctors were involved or acted illegally by falsely registering the births.
However, there have been no prosecutions to date due to a lack of evidence and the lapse of time since the events.
Well-placed sources believe there are likely to be hundreds more of these informal adoptions which have not yet come to the attention of authorities.
Legal experts last night said the issue also raises legal question marks, such as those over inheritance or succession rights.
Following the introduction of the 1952 Adoption Act, it became an offence to adopt a child without a formal adoption order.
This legislation also included safeguards aimed at protecting the mother, such as ensuring that a child be at least three months old before an adoption is authorised.
The Adoption Authority of Ireland is aware of in excess of 100 cases where there are no records for people who say they were adopted. This indicates their birth registration records may have been falsified.
However, some cases took place before the 1952 legislation, when there was no law against informal adoptions.
In a statement last night, the Health Service Executive advised anyone who believes they were “illegally adopted” to contact the Adoption Authority of Ireland or its tracing services. However, it warned that if children were placed in families without any reference to formal adoption procedures, authorities may be very limited in the assistance they can provide.
Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald asked the HSE to conduct a review into illegally registered births. This identified a small number of cases, which were passed on to adoption authorities.
“These cases are a sad legacy of the culture and the practice of the time,” a spokeswoman for the Minister said. She was unable to say whether the Minister or the Government would request any further investigations into the actions of adoption agencies or doctors who may have facilitated these illegal birth registrations.
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Christine Buckley - We must not forget?
January 12, 2013
Christine Buckley
Louis Lentin's documentary "Dear Daughter" which was broadcast by RTE in February 1996 tells the story of Christine Buckley and her experiences in Goldenbridge residential school from 1950 to 1964. Her allegations against the Sisters of Mercy who ran the school, and in particular Sister Xavieria set off a wave of atrocity stories in the media - up to and including allegations that the nuns had caused the death of an infant who had been left in their care.
The allegations contained in "Dear Daughter" itself were shocking enough. In the words of Irish Times journalist Eddie Holt (writing on 24 February 1996) "Christine Buckley was once beaten so badly by the unidentified Sister Sadist of the Shining Stick that she had to get about 100 stitches in her leg. On another occasion, perhaps too tired from walking up a flight of stairs, Stick just poured a kettle of boiling water over 10 year old Christine's right thigh".
The Report of the Ryan Commission published in May 2009 contains no reference to these allegations by Christine Buckley. However UK cultural historian Richard Webster deals with them in his essay "States of Fear, The Redress Board and Ireland's Folly" which is itself an extract from his book "The Secret of Bryn Estyn": http://www.richardwebster.net/print/xbrynestynireland.htm
In 1996 the producer and director, Louis Lentin, made a television documentary about abuse in children’s homes which was shown by RTE, the main public service broadcasting station in Ireland. It focused on the brutal regime which was said to have been operating during the 1950s at St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge, one of a network children’s homes or detention centres which were funded by the state and run by the Catholic Church. The documentary featured allegations made against Sister Xavieria, one of the nuns belonging to the Sisters of Mercy order which ran the home.
The woman ‘survivor’ at the centre of the film claimed that, on one occasion, she had been caned by Sister Xavieria so severely that the entire side of her leg was split open from her hip to her knee. She says she was treated in the casualty department of the local hospital and believes that she received 80 to 120 stitches. No medical evidence has ever been produced to substantiate this bizarre claim. The surgeon who ran the casualty department at the hospital in question has given evidence which renders it highly unlikely that such an incident ever took place. Apart from anything else, the surgeon points out that caning would not have caused a wound of this kind, which would have required surgical treatment under a general anaesthetic and not stitches in a casualty department.
Yet although the evidence suggests that the woman’s memory was a delusion, her testimony was widely believed at the time. In the wake of the broadcast, atrocity stories about Goldenbridge and other industrial schools began to proliferate. [3]
[3] Sunday Times (Ireland), 28 April 1996, citing the views of the surgeon, J. B. Prendiville.
One of the "atrocity stories" referred to by Mr. Webster was that Sister Xavieria had been responsible for the death of a baby, Marion Howe in Goldenbridge. This allegation was then supported by Christine Buckley who said she was "angry at the failure by the Sisters of Mercy to admit liability for what had happened to Marion Howe. This is what the above-mentioned Sunday Times article had to say about this particular "atrocity":
One of the more chilling allegations to surface was that an 11-month-old baby died four days after she was put into Goldenbridge. When the infant's father, Myles Howe. returned from England and went to St Ultan's hospital, he was told by a nurse that his baby had burns on her knees but the staff had got her too late to save her. The postmortem said the child died of dysentery.
The Howes have never been satisfied by the official response.
[Doctor] Prendiville recalls that St Ultan's was established largely for dealing with bowel complaints such as dysentery or gastroenteritis, a common illness among children which at that time could reach epidemic proportions in Dublin. He speculated that Marian Howe was more than likely admitted to St Ultan's with a bowel complaint. "I wouldn't say that burns of that size on a child's legs would have been the cause of death. They didn't treat burns in St Ultan's. If the baby died from a burn, there would have to be an inquest. But failure to communicate information is a defect in many hospitals," he said.
But if the burns were not the cause of Marian's death, asks Howe, why was he told by Xavieria that it was an "accident" and not dysentery that killed his child? Why, on his arrival at St Ultan's to see his dead child, did a nurse indicate to him that his daughter had died of burns? And why could nobody explain to him the large burn marks on the sides of her knees?
The outrage that followed the Prime Time programme *** was directed as much at Xavieria's denials of abuse as at an apparently "soft" line of questioning. The allegation that a baby in her charge died of burns was not put to her on the programme. The reason was that after researching the allegation, the Prime Time team could find no evidence to support it. according to an RTE source. The reporter did ask Xavieria about the incident, he said, but her response was edited out of the programme.
Both Buckley and Dear Daughter producer Louis Lentin, regard the Prime Time report as an effort by RTE to undermine the documentary. "Sister Xavieria is perfectly entitled to any right of reply, but this programme bent over backwards to be reverential," said Lentin. "The facts were not put to her in a strong, investigative manner."
*** A Prime Time special broadcast by RTE in April 1996 highlighted some discrepancies in the tale of horror contained in the "Dear Daughter" documentary.
Report of the Commission to Investigate Child Abuse (Ryan Commission) published in May 2009
The Ryan Report contains no reference to the atrocity stories made or supported by Christine Buckley in relation to Sister Xavieria. I originally thought that Ryan had simply ignored them. I subsequently discovered that the claims were investigated by the Commission sitting in private session and no evidence was found to support them. However instead of reporting this very significant fact, the Commission Report simply ommits Buckley's allegations.
Reprise of False Child Killing Allegation in September 2011
In a letter to the Irish Independent for 6 Septembe 2011, Christine Buckley of "Aislinn Support Centre, Dublin" revisits the old lie about about the Sisters of Mercy in Goldenbridge being responsible for the death of baby Marian Howe in 1955. Her letter entitled "Why Moses wasn't Given a Study Document" is given Letter of the Day status and lists the Commandments that the Catholic Church allegedly broke. "Fifth, thou shall not kill. We know that some victims of institutional abuse have, sadly, taken their own lives. We know children died in care. To name one, Marian Howe died in Goldenbridge Industrial School."
Is it possible that Ms. Buckley actually believes this recycled blood libel?
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Report on the Magdalene Laundries is to be brought to Govt by Justice Minister
January 9, 2013
Updated:
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Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has announced that he intends to bring the Report on the Magdalene Laundries to Government with a view to publication within four weeks.
The Inter-Departmental Committee chaired by Senator Martin McAleese was set up to establish the facts of the State's involvement with the Magdalene Laundries.
"I understand that the report will be submitted to me within 10 days by Senator McAleese,” Minister Shatter said.
“As soon as I have had an opportunity to read what I understand to be a very substantial report, I will bring it to Government and it will then be published."
Last year the UN Committee Against Torture strongly criticised the Government's failure to apologise to and compensate former detainees of the State's ten Catholic-run Magdalene laundries.
Lengthy testimony gathered from survivors was given to the committee, which was established by the Government in response to the UN's criticisms.
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Magdalene survivors demand report
January 1, 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012
By Caroline O’Doherty
Survivors of the Magdalene Laundries have appealed to the Government not to allow another year go by without redress for their suffering.
The Justice for Magdalenes group said it was disappointed that 2012 had come to an end without publication of the final report of a committee established 18 months ago to examine state involvement with the laundries
Minister of State for Justice Kathleen Lynch told the Dáil three months ago the report would be made public by the end of December at the latest.
A Sinn Féin motion calling for an immediate apology to the Magdalenes was defeated, with government parties saying it would be premature without the final report. Justice for Magdalenes spokeswoman Claire McGettrick said that the delay in meaningful government action was prolonging the survivors’ suffering.
“We’re told there is a process under way into examining who was responsible which is fine but our argument all along has been that the apology should have come at the beginning of that process.
“The women deserve that apology. We know there was abuse in the laundries, there is no question of that. And we know the state was complicit at least by neglect if nothing else.”
Four Catholic religious orders ran 10 Magdalene laundries around the country between 1922 and 1996, taking in unmarried pregnant women and girls and others considered wayward, using their free labour to run commercial laundries and having their babies adopted, often outside of Ireland. Thousands passed through the system and survivors tell of regimes of abuse, deprivation, incarceration and forced adoptions.
Justice for Magdalenes was formed 10 years ago after the Magdalenes were excluded from the Residential Institutions Redress Board set up to provide redress for the thousands of children in industrial schools and other state-licensed residential institutions.
Ms McGettrick said any further delay in addressing the Magdalenes’ equally pressing claims was unfair. “It’s cynical if they are made wait any longer. These women are an elderly group of women, most of them, and they just do not have time..”
The Department of Justice said it expected to receive the final report into the matter very soon.
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