Sir, - Dr Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin, said recently that the time had come to consign child sex abuse by clerics to the annals of history (Orwellian-speak for "brushing under the carpet"). This statement both saddened and shocked me.
While working in the Dublin Children's Court in the late 1970s I became aware of a case of systematic and serious sex abuse of young boys by a religious brother in an inland institution run by a religious order. When the abuse was discovered the brother disappeared in a cloud of secrecy (he had a "nervous breakdown") and the matter was successfully covered up. No criminal charge has yet been proffered in the case.
If the Archbishop's statement was to be considered and accepted, this particular case (and any others like it) would never see the light of day. How can a leading figure of our Church be so insensitive and uncaring to the plight of the sexually abused? He is really out of touch with his flock, and with the real world, on this subject. I have written to the Archbishop giving him details of the institution and of the abuse so that he will know that there is still a lot of cases out there waiting for their turn to come into the public arena and that we should not, at this stage, set such abuse "in context".
Oh, that the Catholic Church did not put the same effort into child sex abuse by its clerics that it seems to have put, and be putting, into the matter of inter-church communion. - Yours, etc., Bernard Neary,
Croaghpatrick Road, Navan Road, Dublin 7.