IRELAND
Irish Times
Patsy McGarry
Hearing Cardinal Seán Brady’s evidence to the North’s Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry was to be reminded of a damning conclusion in Judge Yvonne Murphy’s 2009 report on clerical child sexual abuse in the Dublin archdiocese.
He told the inquiry in Banbridge on Thursday that clergy investigating child sexual abuse were bound to secrecy so that the Catholic Church’s “good name” could be protected.
“The scandal was kept a secret; very, very secret . . . Everybody involved would be bound to secrecy too,” he said.
Following her investigation six years ago into the handling of abuse allegations in Dublin, Ms Justice Murphy concluded: “The welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages . . . Instead, the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important assets: the priests.”
There is no doubt that Cardinal Brady regrets his actions and inaction in 1975 when, as a 35-year-old priest, he conducted canonical investigations into allegations by two teenage boys of abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth.
One of those boys, Brendan Boland, has since gone public; the second has chosen not to do so.
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