SCOTLAND
Crux
January 8, 2018
The author of an independent review of the child protection policies of the Catholic Church in Scotland has said he is “disappointed” in the progress the bishops are making in meeting victims and survivors of clerical sexual abuse.
Rev. Andrew McLellan, the former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, was asked in 2013 to chair an interdenominational commission looking at the issue of child protection in Scotland’s Catholic Church.
The McLellan Report, presenting the findings of the commission, was published in 2015, and said, “Support for the survivors of abuse must be an absolute priority for the Catholic Church in Scotland in the field of safeguarding. The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland should make a public apology to all survivors of abuse within the Church.”
In August 2015, Archbishop Philip Tartaglia, Archbishop of Glasgow and president of the Scottish bishops’ conference, said the bishops were “shamed and pained” by clerical sexual abuse and offered a “profound apology” on behalf of the bishops.
“After Archbishop Tartaglia’s public apology, which he did so well, there was a long hard silence, and I was very disappointed in terms of the progress the bishops were making,” McLellan told the Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper.
McLellan, who once served as the Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, said he was pleased with certain areas of progress, like the promised publication of a new safeguarding manual, but said meeting with victims is the priority.
“When our report was published there was a sense that there was a new mood in the Church and it was determined to turn its back on these unhappy practices. I’m astonished that it has taken so long to establish contact with survivor groups,” he told the newspaper.
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