UNITED KINGDOM
Network Norwich
The Catholic Church has admitted it should have taken “more robust action” against a former Norwich priest jailed for sexually abusing a vulnerable teenage boy at a children’s home almost 40 years ago.
Anthony McSweeney was jailed for three years in 2015, after he was found guilty of indecently assaulting the youngster while working at Grafton Close Children’s Home in Hounslow, West London, between 1979 and 1981.
Concerns were raised in 1998, when his cleaner discovered pornographic videos at St Peter’s Catholic Church in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.
But instead of being reported to the police, he was quietly moved to a new parish, St George’s, in Norwich, where he led the Sprowston Road church’s congregation.
Now, the safeguarding commissions of the dioceses of East Anglia and Brentwood have accepted the recommendations made in an independent review following McSweeney’s conviction, and that “there were failings in the way in which the Church managed the situation at the time”.
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