Watchdog’s call to expedite abuse inquiries

National Board launches annual report

The new chief executive of the Church’s safeguarding watchdog has said that canonical investigations of child abuse allegations need to be speeded up, as it is unfair to everyone involved to have “probably thousands of cases” sitting on desks in the Vatican.

Speaking at the launch of the annual report of the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) last week, Teresa Devlin said that “people within the Church now completely understand their obligations to report abuse to the civil authorities”, but what needs better development is “the next stage in terms of canonical or Church processes”.

Ms Devlin, who replaced Ian Elliott as CEO last year, said the Church needs to deal “properly and expeditiously” with allegations once civil inquiries have been completed. “We need to get better at that, because that is fair for both the complainant and the respondent, up to this point a lot of people are sitting in limbo and that’s an unfair way of managing any system.”

Urgent cases

To this end the board has invited the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s (CDF) new Promoter of Justice, Msgr Bob Oliver to Ireland later this month to talk to Church authorities about how to prevent delays in the process of urgent cases.

The annual report of the National Board revealed that 164 new allegations of abuse were reported over the last year. Most of these allegations relate to the 60s, 70s and 80s and this figure is a decrease on the 242 allegations reported the previous year.

All the 26 dioceses of Ireland, eight religious congregations and two missionary societies have now been reviewed and the fifth tranche of audits, including the remaining four dioceses, are due to be published this month. Last year the board engaged five independent reviewers of safeguarding to work alongside Ms Devlin which means the progress of review work has gathered pace and the CEO said she hopes to have another 40 reviews of the remaining institutions completed “by this time next year”.

Training

The report shows that the demand for training and support from across the Church continues to grow, leading to the appointment of a training manager and a three-year training strategy.

The board states that the review process has shown that safeguarding training should start early while priests and religious are in formation, in order to embed a culture of awareness, reporting requirements, prevention strategies and boundary management. Last year six training days were delivered to seminarians and other religious who are preparing for public ministry, and practical pastoral training will be piloted this summer.

Ms Devlin said significant progress has been made in the Church and that over the past five years the culture has changed in relation to safeguarding, but there is an opportunity now to reflect on what lessons can be learned, particularly regarding formation programmes, prevention measures and empowering children.