IRELAND
Irish Times
The following is a summary of previous reports on abuse in the Catholic Church
FERNS REPORT (OCTOBER 2005)
Investigated complaints made by 100 people against 21 priests, among them Seán Fortune. It strongly criticised the Catholic Church’s handling of allegations of child sexual abuse over a period of 40 years. From the 1960s until 1980, the report found Bishop Donal Herlihy regarded priests who sexually abused children “as guilty of moral misconduct” but said he did not seem to recognise “the wrongdoing was a serious criminal offence”. His successor, Dr Brendan Comiskey, “failed to recognise the paramount need to protect children, as a matter of urgency, from potential abusers” and the report accused him of providing erroneous information to one Garda inquiry and failing to co-operate fully with another.
MURPHY REPORT (NOVEMBER 2009)
Investigated cases involving 46 priests and more than 320 children, most of them boys. It found four successive archbishops of the Dublin archdiocese had handled allegations of child sexual abuse with “denial, arrogance and cover-up” and did not report the abuse to gardaí. It said the structures of the church facilitated the cover- up of abuse.
RYAN REPORT (MAY 2009)
Found that thousands of children suffered physical and sexual abuse over several decades in 216 residential institutions run by religious orders, implicating more than 800 priests, brothers, nuns and lay people. The Department of Education was found to have failed to carry out its “statutory duty of inspection” out of deference towards the religious congregation. The report said the religious congregations were not prepared to accept responsibility for the sexual abuse carried out by their members and did not listen to or believe people who complained of sexual abuse.
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