IRELAND
Irish Times
Patsy McGarry
Mon, May 12, 2014
The fact that no child safeguarding case management files existed in the Divine Word (SVD) missionary congregation prior to 2013 “is of great concern and indicates a lack of any focus on child protection within the society over the last 20 years,” the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland (NBSCCCI) review has found.”Case files were constructed by the society in advance of the review taking place,” it said.
The existence of child safeguarding case management files within the congregation “can only be traced back to the beginning of 2013,” it said. “A lot of documentation was either never generated, or was removed or destroyed by parties unknown, or was kept in some file or files the existence of which has not yet been discovered.” it said.
It said it was “not acceptable that any Church authority in Ireland would have waited until 2012 to begin the process of implementing accepted and agreed Church child safeguarding policies, procedures and practices and while there may be explanations offered for this state of affairs, there are no excuses for it.”
It also described as “ truly unfortunate and a great injustice that it is almost impossible to identify the victims of historical child sexual abuse who live in developing countries and whose abuse took place many years ago.
“The behaviour of the few SVD members who perpetrated this abuse has severely undermined the integrity of a Christian brotherhood that aspires to bring the Good News to people who have not yet heard it,” it said.
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