The director of the One in Four organisation, Mr Colm O'Gorman, has written to all of Ireland's Catholic bishops about the "distinct contradiction" between their public expressions of compassion towards victims of clerical child sex abuse and the experience of people "who have engaged with the church in seeking an acknowledgement of and response to" what they had suffered.
One in Four helps people who have been sexually abused as children. In the letter, which was sent to the bishops in April, Mr O'Gorman said One In Four had daily contact with people who had experienced the response of bishops to their experiences of abuse "to be intimidating, minimising, hurtful, unloving and disrespectful". The church, through its lawyers, had acted "particularly viciously" in some cases, he said.
"It is difficult to understand how bishops can instruct their lawyers to be as cold and calculating as they often appear whilst at the same time they make public statements of care and concern.
"Such an approach has left many of us who have been abused feeling that the church cares only about its public image and that its expressions of care relate not to any genuine Christian compassion but instead seem designed to repair the tarnished public image of the bishops and the institutional church," he said.
As an example, Mr O'Gorman enclosed a copy of a letter he had received from lawyers for Ferns diocese prior to settlement being reached in his own case before Easter.
It sought details of all "acts of physical and sexual abuse" alleged by Mr O'Gorman against Father Seán Fortune, the frequency of later sexual encounters, and whether he had "asked for and/or received payment in respect of these encounters".
Much of the information requested "was unrelated to my case or had already been disclosed by myself to a psychiatrist commissioned to prepare a report for the diocese's legal team", he said.
He felt it was difficult to see the letter "as anything other than an attempt to intimidate".
