Ongoing religious scandals

"Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Katherine Zappone has said that money will not be the most relevant consideration when a final decision is taken on what will happen at the site of the former mother and baby home in Tuam, Co Galway.

A mass grave of babies and children was discovered earlier this year at the site of home, which was run by the Sisters of the Bon Secours.

A technical report being considered by Cabinet lists five options for the Tuam site.

They include making the site a memorial and suspending further investigative work.

Another option would see a full forensic and archaeological excavation of all the grounds once occupied by the home, which includes a playground and a carpark.

The costs involve range from €100,000 to €5 million."
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2017/1212/926852-tuam-mother-and-baby-home/

I would have thought a full excavation would be carried out at the least.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/australian-abuse-report-calls-for-end-to-secrecy-of-confession-1.3328432

Australian abuse report calls for end to secrecy of confession

Five-year inquiry into child sex abuse finds 'catastrophic failures' in Catholic leadership


Leaders of the Catholic church in Australia have dismissed calls from a landmark inquiry into child sexual abuse that the Vatican should make celibacy for priests voluntary and end the secrecy of confession.

After five years, Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse delivered its 21-volume report to government containing 400 recommendations - 189 of them new - to governments and organisations about how to prevent children being harmed on such a scale again.

Among the recommendations, the report said the government should introduce a law forcing religious leaders to report child abuse, including Catholic priests told of abuse in the confessional.

One the country’s top catholics, Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, said such a law would undermine a central tenet of Catholicism, the sacredness of the confessional, and warned that any priest breaking the seal of confession would be excommunicated.

The investigation found "multiple and persistent failings of institutions to keep children safe, the cultures of secrecy and cover-up, and the devastating affects child sexual abuse can have on an individual’s life", the commission said in a statement.

The report detailed tens of thousands of child victims, saying their abusers were "not a case of a few rotten apples".

"We will never know the true number," it read.

smokingman wrote: »

Anyone else see the YouTube ads taken out by that crazy Burke family crying religious discrimination at Galway University?

Nope, I must be blessed. :pac:

I can hazard a guess as to where they're getting the money from. :rolleyes:

Of course not. No evidence that the bishop committed any crime. What would you charge him with?

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Would have thought it obvious, but anyway - he was aware of the abuse in 1996 but does not appear to have reported it to the police.

It's not clear that that was the necessarily case. While the report says that the priest confessed his abuse, the evidence as reported doesn't bear this out:

Bishop Maurice Taylor, 91, gave evidence in the trial and told the court Moore admitted he had "an attraction to young boys" and had "a desire to abuse minors".

Attractions and desires are not offences. Unless the priest actually admitted his offences to the bishop, the question of the bishop reporting them to the police doesn't arise.

Of course, that could be sloppy journalism; the bishop may also have said that Moore admitted his crimes but, if so, the decision to not to quote that evidence, but to quote evidence of obviously lesser importance seems an odd one. Still it could happen.

But, even if the priest did admit his offences, the bishop was not under any obligation to report them to the police, and failing to do so is not something which which he could be charged. Not reporting a crime of which you are aware is not generally an offence.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Child abuse is different however. I doubt we had mandatory reporting here in 1996 but the UK may have had.

The UK doesn't have mandatory reporting even now.

There is professional guidance applicable to certain professions who work with children that requires reporting of known or suspected child abuse, but it doesn't have legal force and failing to comply with it is not a crime. Breach may result in disciplinary proceedings, but not prosecution. In any event it's unlikely that the bishop is a member of one of the professions subject to this guidance.

They recently completed a review of their child protection system, in the course of which they considered the possibility of a legally-mandated reporting requirement which would again have applied only to certain professions (probably not including bishops). They reviewed such systems in place in other countries and their outcomes, consulted various stakeholders in the UK and invited submissions from the public and from interested bodies and groups. The overwhelming view was that a mandatory reporting requirement would not make a positive contribution to child safety, and the conclusion of the review was that it should not be introduced.

All of which is a bit more information than you may need. But the bottom line is that there is nothing (that we know of) with which the bishop could have been charged in relation to what he didn't do in 1996, and the decision not to charge him is neither surprising nor sinister.

recedite wrote: »

Seems surprising.
Do you know why? (in a nutshell )

This is one of these areas where expectations suggest one outcome, but experience delivers another.

You'd certainly think mandatory reporting would improve child safety; it seems like common sense. But where it's been tried that's generally not the experience. Problematic factors include:

- Lots of low-quality or unsubstantiated referrals; they have to be investigated and it turns out there's nothing there. And this is hugely stressful, and sometimes damaging, to the people/families affected.

- Diversion of resources from actual child abuse/neglect into assessment and investigation of reports

- "passing the buck"; once people have reported, they have an increased propensity to regard the problem as solved. They do nothing further.

- Reporting gets driven by the process and box-ticking rather than by a focus on the needs of the child. This distorts professional practice away from investigation/intervention and towards reporting.

- Reluctance of children to confide in e.g. teachers if they become aware that this results in an automatic report. Undermining of confidentiality for victims of abuse.

A lesson learned fairly early on was that if you do introduce mandatory reporting you have to provide substantial additional resources for investigation and assessment. There were embarrassing cases of reports being made, and put in a pile, and the authorities haven't got around to them until the child is dead. The problem, of course, is that you can't pick out the case of the child who's in real danger and prioritise that; you have to investigate and assess them all before you know which one is the child in real danger.

In fairness, that was a lesson learned pretty quickly, and after that new or extended reporting requirements tended to form part of wider reforms that included extra resources. but then someobody pointed out, if you are prepared to devote extra resources to child protection, why not do that first, before you have mandatory reporting, so that the resources can be deployed in ways that might be more effective that investigating and assessing a flood of reports? This might produce a better outcome, in terms of improved child safety.

A lot of this is based on the experience of places where mandatory reporting has been introduced. It's not so much speculation about what might happen, but observation of what did happen.

Evidence-based belief, in other words.