Madam, - Bishop Colm O'Reilly and Minister of State for Children Brian Lenihan (Dec 23rd) try to allay any concerns regarding the Catholic Church's child protection guidelines.
Bishop O'Reilly says the church's policies are standard practice of the State and other organisations. If this is the case in Ireland it is patently wrong.
As a child protection practitioner, consultant and trainer in this field for 15 years in the UK, I know of no policy there which allows organisations to make their own inquiries before going to the police. Neither do I know of inter-agency groups being established in any secular organisation to look at child abuse issues (the Catholic Church in England and Wales established this model which we argued against). Most secular organisations have a child protection officer, yes, but that officer's role is to make sure all allegations are handled quickly and efficiently with immediate referral to the proper authority - the police.
They make no further enquiries as to the validity of allegations made, as this invariably compromises the police investigation. I train these officers and I am at pains to stress that such a quasi-investigation is likely to ruin or compromise any chance of conviction.
This is why it remains worrying that Bishop O'Reilly continues to assert that the church's officer, a qualified professional, will make the decision on whether such grounds exist to report to the gardaí (I continue to argue this is a quasi-investigation) yet in a further paragraph Bishop O'Reilly goes on to say that an inter-agency approach will be taken and all information will be shared with the multi-agency group which we now know includes the gardaí.
So how does it work? Will the church's qualified professional make inquiry to "establish grounds for concern" and then go to the gardaí, or will he/she bring it to the multi-agency group and they together decide whether it goes forward for criminal investigation?
This strikes me as an "investigation" which only the gardaí are qualified to pursue.
The only role the church has is to report all allegations of clergy sexual abuse to the proper authorities. Ambiguity of role and process would be vastly clarified if there was a simple policy of mandatory reporting. This is now an urgent priority. - Yours, etc,
MARGARET KENNEDY, Chair, Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, London E8 1XA.
Madam, - Congratulations to Mary Raftery for her column (Dec 22nd) entitled "Church Still Has Not Learned". In this she brings us up to date on the behaviour of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in their dealings with all aspects of the child sex abuse scandals. So confused was I concerning the entire matter that I decided to seek enlightenment from the church itself concerning its view of lying and dishonesty in A Catechism of Catholic Doctrine approved by the archbishops and bishops of Ireland dated 1951.
In the comparatively small section devoted to the 8th commandment of God, viz "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour", I found an interesting question - number 264 - "Is a lie always sinful?"And the answer: "A lie is always sinful and nothing can excuse it; it is a mortal sin when it does serious injury to our neighbour." One is compelled to ask: what exactly is serious injury?
And may one deduce from this that lies that do not do serious injury to our neighbour may be classified as only what are callled "venial sins"?
Mortal or venial, the fact remains that the Founder and Head of all Christian churches stated clearly concerning Satan, the arch-enemy of all mankind, "when he lies he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the Father of Lies" (John 8:44). - Yours, etc,
WG GLENN, Rathmines, Dublin 6.