Many auxiliaries aware of complaints

By Fiona Gartland
Irish Times
November 27, 2009

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1127/1224259548714.html

THE AUXILIARY BISHOPS: MANY OF the auxiliary bishops of Dublin were aware of complaints of child sexual abuse, but assignments of priests to parishes were "often made without any reference to child sexual abuse issues", the report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin found.

One of the auxiliary bishops' principal tasks was the assignment of priests to parishes, subject to final approval by the archbishop.

Bishop James Kavanagh, Bishop Dermot O'Mahony, Bishop Laurence Forristal, Bishop Donal Murray and Bishop Brendan Comiskey were aware for many years of complaints and/or suspicions of clerical sexual abuse in the archdiocese, the report notes.

It finds Bishop O'Mahony's handling of complaints and suspicions of child sexual abuse was "particularly bad".

Now retired, Bishop O'Mahony served as auxiliary bishop of Dublin from 1975 to 1996. He was aware of 13 priests from within the representative sample examined by the commission and a number of others, the report found.

Bishop Brendan Comiskey told the commission that Bishop O'Mahony, because of his "nature and intelligence and kindness", was often given a mandate to speak to a priest "in trouble".

Criticisms of Bishop O'Mahony include that he failed to tell Archbishop Dermot Ryan about a number of complaints. One of these related to the late Fr Vidal. He gave this priest a reference to the diocese of Sacramento in California without explaining that he had "a relationship" with a girl when she was 13. He also shredded documents relating to the matter in 2001.

In the case of Fr Ivan Payne, Bishop O'Mahony allowed a psychiatric report which was clearly based on inaccurate information to be relied on by Archbishop Ryan and subsequently by Archbishop Desmond Connell.

The late Bishop James Kavanagh was the longest serving auxiliary bishop in Dublin, from 1972 to 1998. The report says he failed to deal properly with Fr William Carney even when he pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse. He also tried to influence Garda handling of the criminal complaints against the priest, and he persuaded a family to drop a complaint they had made to gardaí about another priest. Bishop Laurence Forristal, now retired, was the only bishop to unequivocally admit he might not have handled matters satisfactorily.

His failures, it concludes, included not following up on a complaint made in 1981 by the sister of an man who alleged he was abused by Fr Hugo as a child.

In 1995, when Bishop Forristal chaired the committee drawing up the document Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response, he received a letter from the woman asking why he had not followed up her complaint. He told her he could not because he had been appointed Bishop of Ossory shortly after she made the complaint, but was sure he had passed it on to the Archbishop.

And despite complaints against Fr Cicero [ a pseudonym] in the 1980s, Bishop Forristal helped him to remain working at the Dublin Regional Marriage Tribunal under supervision. The matter was not reported to gardaí.