IRELAND
Irish Examiner
August 21, 2018
By Caroline O’Doherty
The identities of around 1,000 Irish Catholic clergy against whom credible allegations of child sexual abuse have been made are being kept secret under laws and practices that continue to hurt victims and endanger children, it has been claimed.
The Boston-based group BishopAccountability.org, established following revelations of abuse and cover-ups in Boston in the early 2000s, delivered the warning while publishing the first database of clergy convicted of abuse in Ireland.
Despite the Church here acknowledging child sex abuse allegations against more than 1,300 clergy over the last 40 years, just 75 can be named because of highly restrictive defamation and data-protection laws.
That is despite the fact that many of the others were sanctioned under Church law and the belief that some of the accused remain in ministry or active in community life where they could be in contact with children.
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