Relative of priest accused of abuse seeks headstone's removal

By Harriet Sherwood
Guardian
April 2, 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/02/relative-of-priest-accused-of-abuse-seeks-headstones-removal

Stephen Bernard, whose acclaimed book, Paper Cuts, was published in February and detailed his alleged abuse by Canon Fogarty which started when he was 11.

Deirdre McCormack says Catholic church covered up claims by Oxford academic later detailed in acclaimed book

The next of kin of a senior Catholic priest who was accused of sexual abuse before his death wants the headstone she paid for to be removed and destroyed.

Deirdre McCormack said she was “outraged and disgusted” at the allegations made by an Oxford academic against Canon Dermod Fogarty, and said the church had tried to sweep the disclosures “under the carpet”. She is seeking the urgent removal of the headstone.

The allegations were made by Stephen Bernard in an acclaimed book, Paper Cuts, published in February, which details more than 300 assaults over a four-year period starting in 1987 when Bernard was 11.

The disclosures came as a shock to McCormack, who was Fogarty’s closest living relative and inherited his personal effects.

Bernard reported his alleged abuse to the diocese of Arundel and Brighton, where Fogarty was based, in September 2012. The case was not passed on to the police and McCormack was not informed.

A month later Fogarty died at the age of 92. He was given a lavish funeral, attended by the then leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, and at least 80 priests.

Murphy O’Connor, who died last year, told the congregation that Fogarty “had fulfilled what every priest has to do – to teach and preach the faith from Jesus Christ, and that he did admirably with knowledge and with care”.

As next of kin, McCormack had Fogarty’s ashes interred at St John’s seminary at Wonersh in Surrey. She commissioned and paid for a headstone with the words: “A wise priest much loved by his family and all who knew him.”

But since reading Bernard’s book, McCormack – who was also abused by a priest when she was a child – has demanded the removal and destruction of the headstone. Fogarty “misused his power and position of trust as a priest, and a very highly respected one, in a most appalling way”, she said.

She believed that “information was withheld from me over the period of Fogarty’s death and funeral and so I became unknowingly complicit with the diocese’s decision to sweep Stephen’s disclosure under the carpet”.

She said: “I find their treatment of him very shocking, and a pattern of events we see far too frequently in the way the church responds to survivors.”

In an email to the rector of St John’s seminary demanding the removal of the headstone, she wrote: “My hope is that this action might provide Stephen with some sense that justice is finally being done, and that may help him to move on with his life, secure in the knowledge that both Canon Fogarty’s family and the church, having learnt the wrongs Canon Fogarty perpetrated, fully acknowledge them and want to do whatever is in our power to support Stephen and ease his suffering.”

McCormack is due to meet Richard Moth, the bishop of Arundel and Brighton, next week to discuss the matter.

The diocese confirmed it had received Bernard’s allegation of abuse on 6 September 2012 and had “responded in accordance with the church’s national procedures”. A member of the diocesan safeguarding team met Bernard four days later but “the matter was not referred to the police or to any third parties in 2012”.

It said: “At the time the allegations were made Canon Dermod Fogarty was seriously ill and shortly afterwards died so it was not possible to put the allegations to him and for him to respond to them.”

Bernard, who reported his claims to the police in 2015, said he had nothing to add to the disclosures in his book.