The Bishop of Cloyne misled the State about his diocese's safeguards on two occasions, writes Patsy McGarry
BISHOP JOHN Magee apologised last night to all those abused by priests in Cloyne diocese for the third time in as many weeks. Does it matter anymore?
If anything his position is even more untenable following what we were told yesterday: how, on two occasions in recent years, he misled the State on child-protection practices in his diocese. As Minister for Children Barry Andrews put it: "I believe there is evidence that points to the fact that Bishop Magee, as the responsible person, did not faithfully report actual compliance with child-protection procedures and the manner in which clerical sexual abuse allegations have been dealt with."
It was why, the Minister explained, the Government had requested the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation to carry out an examination of the Diocese of Cloyne.
It will be the third such investigation. How many more?
At his press conference yesterday, Andrews disclosed that in a direct response to the then minister for children Brian Lenihan, dated November 23rd, 2005, Bishop Magee stated: "I wish to affirm that, in the Diocese of Cloyne, the guidelines contained in the 1996 document of the Episcopal Conference, Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response are fully in place and being fully complied with."
He also said, "in our endeavour to ensure a safe environment for children . . . we have initiated a process that is fully compliant with the directives of the Government as contained in Children First: National Guidelines for the Protection and Welfare of Children."
But, as Andrews noted, "the HSE investigation corroborates the NBSC finding that the diocese did not adhere to either church or State . . . guidelines for notifying the gardaí and the HSE of allegations of . . . sexual abuse."
The second instance where Bishop Magee misled the State concerned the HSE audit questionnaire. It was completed by Cloyne and received by the HSE on January 3rd, 2007.
In it, the diocese stated that it "works in keeping with statutory guidelines Children First (1999) and Our Duty to Care and is committed to appropriate implementation of Our Children, Our Church in keeping with the directions of the National Board for Child Protection and in this regard has in place a diocesan child-protection policy which is designed to meet the requirements of both statutory and church guidelines."
But, as Andrews put it yesterday "in hindsight, the HSE records provide evidence that at a time that the audit questionnaire was completed, the diocese was in fact handling a complaint in relation to child abuse, which it had failed to notify to the HSE".
It is clear from these two latest revelations, if it were not already clear from the findings of the NBSC report, that Bishop Magee cannot be trusted to oversee proper child-protection practices in his diocese, whether those are ordained by church or State.
Yet despite the stark evidence provided by the NBSC report, those two glaring failures and its own investigation, the HSE decided a referral of Cloyne for investigation to the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation was "not warranted". How could it possibly have arrived at such a conclusion?
Indeed, you have to wonder about the HSE's conduct of this so-called audit of every Catholic diocese in the Republic. It is an audit in name only. It lacks the crucial information sought in Section 5 of that HSE questionnaire and which the Catholic bishops did not provide for legal reasons but without which a real audit was not possible. The Minister said that the bishops' position on Section 5 "was arguable". What was being sought were "numbers" he said, and that the section "had been anonymised". But the HSE accepted the bishops' position and went ahead to prepare what is, at best, a work in progress.
What is most worrying about all of this is that the cases uncovered in Cloyne, which led to that damning NBSC report, the HSE investigation of Cloyne and the new investigation into Cloyne announced yesterday, would have come under the Section 5 category of that HSE questionnaire.
It raises an obvious question: how many other such cases are there out there in how many other Catholic dioceses in the Republic?
That is what a real audit would have established.