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  Paedophilia: Lay Official Put on Trial in Diocece of Plymouth

Vatican Insider
October 29, 2011

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/news/detail/articolo/pedofilia-paedophilia-gran-bretagna-great-britain-gran-bretana-chiesa-church-iglesia-9422/

Temperatures are raised in England’s paedophile priest scandal. The Catholic Church has ordered an urgent review of its policy on the protection of children, after a lay official it had put in charge of investigating into some sexual abuse cases in the Diocese of Plymouth, was incriminated of having 4.000 paedopornographic images in his possession.

At the time of his arrest, Chris Jarvis – this is the name of the former child safety co-ordinator in question, - was in charge of an investigation into the accusations of sexual violence in Buckfast Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Devon. This is not the first Benedictine institute to be placed under investigation: just this week, the Vatican ordered an Apostolic visit to Ealing Abbey in west London, where abuse against children was allegedly carried out in St. Benedict’s school, which is adjacent to the abbey, in the period between the 60’s and 2009.

The fact that the church employed a paedophile to investigate into child protection, will definitely add to the sense of crisis already felt within the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Jarvis had been in charge of child protection policies in 120 churches in the Diocese of Plymouth, for nine years.

A review of the system has now been ordered by Bishop Christopher Budd, who asked the children’s charity, NSPCC, to manage the inquiry. Budd even wrote to the victim who reported the Buckfast case, affirming: “I understand how discovering that Chris Jarvis watched images of children who had been victims of abuse, must have made you feel like a victim again. He has betrayed our trust and that of many others with whom he had worked, both victims of abuse and colleagues.”

Today Jarvis attended a hearing at Plymouth Crown Court, after admitting to eleven counts of making, possessing paedopornographic images and one count of distributing these. Ten of these images fell into the extreme category.

Judge Paul Darlow dismissed attempts by the defence to defer Jarvis’ sentence with claims that he would benefit more from psychiatric help than from a jail sentence.

The Mail Online newspaper gave confirmation that “Jarvis was jailed for 36 weeks concurrently for each of six charges of possessing indecent images of a child and five of making an indecent image of a child plus a further 16 weeks consecutively for a single charge of distributing indecent images of children.”

 
 

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