Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal In Ireland

From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion rights in 2018.

Like the Catholic Church sex abuse cases in the United States and elsewhere, the abuse in Ireland included cases of high-profile, supposedly celibate Catholic clerics involved in illicit heterosexual relations as well as widespread physical abuse of children in the Catholic-run childcare network. In many cases, the abusing priests were moved to other parishes to avoid embarrassment or a scandal, assisted by senior clergy. By 2010 a number of in-depth judicial reports had been published, but with only a limited number of criminal convictions.

In March 2010, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology for all of the abuse that had been carried out by Catholic clergy in Ireland. On 31 May 2010, Benedict established a formal panel to investigate the sex abuse scandal, saying that it could serve as a healing mechanism for the country and its Catholics. Among the nine members of the apostolic visitation were Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley, the Archbishop of Boston (he investigated the Archdiocese of Dublin); Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan, the Archbishop of New York (he investigated the issue of proper priestly formation and visited the seminaries); two nuns (who investigated women's religious institutes and the formation there), Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster, England; Archbishop Terrence Thomas Prendergast of Ottawa, Canada; and Cardinal-Archbishop Thomas Christopher Collins of Toronto, Canada. In August 2018, a list was published revealing that over 1,300 Catholics in Ireland were accused of sexual abuse and 82 of them were convicted.

Early revelations of sexual misconduct

The accepted norm in the Irish Church was that its priesthood was celibate and chaste, and homosexuality was both a sin and a crime. The Church forbade its members (the " faithful") to use artificial contraception, campaigned strongly against laws allowing abortion and divorce, and publicly disapproved of unmarried cohabiting couples and illegitimacy. Therefore, it came as a considerable surprise when the Irish media started to report allegations of lapses in these aspects of the priesthood itself. The Church's high stated standards had also led on in part to the Ann Lovett tragedy and the Kerry Babies case in 1984.

A series of television documentaries in the 1990s and 2000s, such as "Suffer the children" ( UTV, 1994), '' Suing the Pope'' or ''The Magdalene Sisters'', led on to the need for a series of government-sponsored reports and new guidelines within the Church and society to better protect children. In 1995–2002 the emergence of the same problem in the USA led to the view that the Church had attempted to cover up abuse and misconduct, and was not limited to sexual abuse (see Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States). By the late 2000s the misconduct was recognised as a worldwide scandal.

Micheál Ledwith

In 1984, a group of seminarians in the 'senior division' of St Patrick's Seminary, Maynooth, expressed their concerns to the senior dean regarding the inappropriate behaviour of Micheál Ledwith, then vice-president of the college, towards younger students. Ledwith was promoted to President of St Patrick's Seminary despite the allegations. He subsequently resigned as president in 1994 when allegations of sexual abuse resurfaced.

In June 2002, the bishops commissioned Denis McCullough to investigate allegations reported in ''The Irish Times'' that the bishops had not responded adequately to complaints of sexual harassment of seminarians at Maynooth College in the early 1980s. McCullough's report, published on 16 June 2005, found that, while the seminarians had not complained directly to the bishops regarding Ledwith's alleged sexual abuse, "concerns of apparent propensities rather than accusations of actual crime or specific offences" had been communicated to the bishops by the senior dean of the college. McCullough concluded "that to have rejected the senior dean's concerns so completely and so abruptly without any adequate investigation may have been too precipitate, although, of course, to investigate, in any very full or substantial manner, a generic complaint regarding a person's apparent propensities would have been difficult".

Brendan Smyth

One of the most widely known cases of sexual abuse in Ireland involved Brendan Smyth, who, between 1945 and 1989, sexually abused and assaulted 20 children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin and the United States. The investigation of the Smyth case was allegedly obstructed by the Norbertine Order. He was arrested in 1995; however, Ireland's Attorney General did not immediately comply with a request from the Royal Ulster Constabulary for Smyth's extradition. The ensuing controversy over the delay led to the collapse of the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition government.Escholarship.bc.edu
As of early May 2012 Cardinal Seán Brady was under pressure to resign because as a part of a church investigation into Smyth he only reported the information he gleaned to church authorities and not to the police. The church's subsequent failure to deal with Smyth gave him the opportunity to abuse more children. Brady only resigned when required to do so by canon law upon turning 75 in September 2014.

Abuse in the state childcare system

In the 1990s, a series of television programs publicised allegations of systemic abuse in Ireland's Roman Catholic-run childcare system, primarily in the Reformatory and Industrial Schools. The abuse occurred primarily between the 1930s and 1970s. These documentaries included "Dear Daughter", "Washing Away the Stain" and "Witness: Sex in a Cold Climate and Sinners". These programs interviewed adult victims of abuse who provided "testimony of their experiences, they documented Church and State collusion in the operation of these institutions, and they underscored the climate of secrecy and denial that permeated the church response when faced with controversial accusations." The topic was also covered by American broadcast media. Programs such as CBS's ''60 Minutes'' and ABC's ''20/20'' produced segments on the subject for an Irish-American audience.

In 1999, a documentary film series titled '' States of Fear'' detailed abuse suffered by Irish children between the 1930s and 1970s in the state childcare system, primarily in the Reformatory and Industrial Schools.

Response of the Irish government to the scandal

In response to the furore aroused by the media reports, the Irish government commissioned a study which took nine years to complete. On 20 May 2009, the commission released its 2600-page report, which drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions. The commission found that Catholic priests and nuns had terrorised thousands of boys and girls for decades and that government inspectors had failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. The report characterised rape and molestation as "endemic" in Irish Catholic church-run Industrial Schools and orphanages.

Response of the Church to the scandals

In February 2002, 18 religious institutes agreed to provide more than €128 million in compensation to the victims of child abuse.

In 2005 the Church published an Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.

In 2006 the Church set up the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSC) to suggest ways to safeguard children and improve policy, and to monitor practices and observance of policy. In 2008 the Health Service Executive had required a child safety audit which the Bishops felt unable to co-operate with for legal reasons, and in 2009 they asked the NBSC to perform this role. In its report of 2010–March 2011 the NBSC complained that it had also been denied the same information, also for legal reasons, and that Church funding for its training programmes in child protection had ended in 2009. The 2010–11 report listed 272 new allegations of abuse, mainly "of a historical nature", up from 197 allegations in its 2009–10 report.

Brendan Comiskey

In March 2002, a BBC
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