IRELAND
Irish Independent
SARAH MACDONALD – PUBLISHED 02 MAY 2014
The Catholic Church’s child protection watchdog has warned there is no room for complacency over a decrease in abuse complaints.
The annual report from the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland revealed it dealt with 164 allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the last year, down from the 242 it examined the previous year.
The new figures show that 64 allegations were received against priests in Irish dioceses and 100 against figures from religious congregations, totalling 164 for the period April 2013 to the end of March 2014.
Launching the NBSCCCI’s annual report in Dublin, chief executive Teresa Devlin said it highlighted a number of areas where the Church and its organisations need to pull up their socks including learning “better and more compassionate ways of responding to victims.”
She told the Irish Independent that the Church also needed to work at restoring survivors’ sense of well-being.
The watchdog also highlights a lack of clear standards regarding the supervision of priests and religious out of ministry and against whom an allegation has been made or who have been convicted of abuse.
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