Ongoing religious scandals

The Catholic Primate of All Ireland has said he would be disappointed if the religious congregations were scapegoated for their role in mother-and-baby homes.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I reckon if a historian working with a forensic accountant went through the books for those homes a great deal of fraud would be found.

robindch wrote: »

The news report below covers the report of Australia's Royal Commission into child sexual abuse between 1950 and 2010, and it found that 7% of religious had had complaints made against them . . . .

robindch wrote: »

Indeed, thanks, 7% of priests - the report doesn't give the corresponding figure for non-priests, or at least, doesn't seem to, or not without a lot of calculation anyway.

At seven percent of priests, though, plus the given number of claims for non-priests, the claim that few people in the community knew what was going on seem, at best, really quite implausible.

A member of the Jehovah's Witness church has admitted the sexual exploitation of a 13-year-old girl.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, was aged 29 when he met the girl through their mutual association with a local Jehovah's Witness congregation.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that over a period of time in 2016 he and the girl exchanged messages on Viber, including sexually explicit images of the child.

The offending came to light when the girl's older sister spotted the messages and semi-naked images on a shared computer device and alerted their mother.

The court heard that the man and the girl began talking initially about organising team sports' activities in connection with the church. The man told gardaí that the girl told him she was feeling bad and was thinking of harming herself.

He told gardaí he was concerned and wanted to “calm her down”. He later sent her topless images of himself and a naked photo of himself. In turn she sent him images of her topless.

During some text exchanges the pair referred to each other as “darling” and spoke about being in love, being boyfriend and girlfriend and about getting engaged, Garda Padraic Rowan told the court.

In one exchange the man asked her if she would perform oral sex on him if he asked and she said she would. He told her he meant this for after “the wedding”.

The man, now aged 34 and with an address in Dublin, pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child on dates in late 2016. He also admitted possession of sexually explicit images of the child, contrary to the Child Pornography and Trafficking Act, 1998.

Michael Bowman SC, defending, told the court that his client was “sexually naive in the extreme” and that this partly resulted from his involvement with an “extremely conservation religion in terms of sexual mores”.

He said that anything other than kissing or hugging in advance of getting married was not permitted and could lead to excommunication. He said that after his arrest and interview his client went to “church elders” and self-reported his actions and was excommunicated for a period.

Garda Rowan agreed with Mr Bowman’s submission that this was an isolated incident and there were no ongoing inquiries in relation to his behaviour or his actions in the church.

He said that the Probation Service have assessed him as being at a moderate risk of reoffending. He said his client wishes to apologise to the victim and her family.

Judge Karen O'Connor said this was a very serious matter and that the age disparity was very significant. She adjourned the case to February 18 next for sentencing.

Peregrinus wrote: »

I may be missing your point, but criminals of any kind don't normally turn themselves in, for fairly obvious reasons. And I don't see why you would expect this to play out differently in Ireland and the US. I wouldn't expect paedophile offenders, lay or clerical, church-linked or — um — freelance, to turn themselves in in either country.

NIMAN wrote: »

. . . And as usual with LiveLine, it was a strange discussion. He was described by several callers as a nice guy, very charismatic. I suppose as nice as a child abuser can be.

NIMAN wrote: »

Afaik, its a crime to hide knowledge of other serious crimes, but with 'the religious', they seem to get a by-ball.

Peregrinus wrote: »

That's the thing, though. They can be very nice, very charismatic. They very often have highly developed skills in befriending children and engaging their trust.

There are child sex abusers who are seriously weird, and obviously so - Jimmy Savile leaps at once to mind. But this is actually exceptional. The majority of child sex offenders enjoy the company of children, enjoy being with them, and have developed or have always had attributes that make children enjoy their company. I recall a priest at my school who left about a year after I arrived and who I later discovered was a sexual abuser, though I had no inkling of it at the time. He was extremely popular with the boys - great fun to be with, everybody wanted to be noticed by him. That's a fairly common pattern.


In general, it's not a crime to hide your knowledge of other serious crimes, so the religious were never getting a bye on this.

Within the last few years the law on this has changed slightly; there's now a mandatory reporting obligation that affects certain classes of people, requiring them to report knowledge, belief or reasonable suspicion of assault, ill-treatment, neglect or sexual abuse of a child. The religious don't get a bye; members of the clergy and pastoral care workers of a church or other religious community are specifically mentioned in the classes of people who are subject to the mandatory reporting obligation.

Igotadose wrote: »

FWIW, in the USA, Clergy are mandatory reporters in many states. No reason they couldn't be mandatory reporters in Ireland

15. Person employed in any of the following capacities:

(g) member of the clergy (howsoever described) or pastoral care worker (howsoever described) of a church or other religious community;

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Also, for added hypocrisy points, he's married to an immigrant :pac:

Originally part of the 1947 Health Act, the idea of a Mother and Child scheme encountered resistance from the Catholic hierarchy. A letter from the bishops to Taoiseach Eamon de Valera indicating that they viewed the scheme as the State intervening in areas that were the domain of the church was enough to freeze the initiative.

As the minister for health in the first inter-party government (1948-51), Noel Browne revived the idea of education and free medical care for mothers and children up to the age of 16 – prompting a cacophony of objections from vested interests.

Browne’s attempts to negotiate with the hierarchy went nowhere, with the Bishop of Galway, Michael Browne (no relation), denouncing the Mother and Child scheme as “based on the socialistic principle that children belonged to the State . . . and reminded one of the claims put forward by Hitler and Stalin”.

On April 12th, 1951, under the front-page headline Minister Releases Correspondence, The Irish Times reproduced the full text of the letters, the most telling of which, dating from October 1950, was a letter from the hierarchy to taoiseach John A Costello. It described Browne’s scheme as “a ready-made instrument for future totalitarian aggression”, declared that the “right to provide for the health of children belongs to parents, not to the state” and noted that “education in regard to motherhood includes instruction in regard to sex relations, chastity and marriage. The State has no competence to give instruction in such matters”.

It was also alarmed that “doctors trained in institutions in which we have no confidence [i.e. - not under RCC control] may be appointed as medical officers under the proposed services and may give gynaecological care not in accordance with Catholic principles”.

The whole affair, as [Irish Times editor] Smyllie saw it, demonstrated “that the Roman Catholic Church would seem to be the effective Government of this country”. Undaunted but clearly annoyed, taoiseach John A Costello declared in the Dáil that he was “not in the least bit afraid of the Irish Times or any other newspaper. I, as a Catholic, obey my Church authorities and will continue to do so, in spite of the Irish Times or anything else, in spite of the fact that they may take votes from me or my Party, or anything else of that kind”.

For his part, Dublin’s Catholic Archbishop, John Charles McQuaid, viewed the church’s victory as a sign of who really ran Ireland. In a report on the controversy to the papal nuncio, McQuaid declared that “Protestants now see clearly under what conditions of Catholic morality they would have to be governed in the Republic”. In McQuaid’s eyes, home rule really was Rome rule.

In later decades Bowne outlined his attempts at healthcare reform in his bestselling autobiography Against the Tide, which contained telling descriptions of bishops and politicians enjoying the high life of episcopal palaces and state-funded galas in a country that supposedly couldn’t afford free maternity care.