SCOTLAND
Herald Scotland
Saturday 9 March 2013
THE Catholic Church in Scotland is facing further turmoil amid reports bishops knew of 20 allegations of child-sex abuse by priests between 1985 and 1995.
Academic Alan Draper was appointed to advise the Church on sexual abuse and how to respond to it in the mid-1990s.
He asked the country’s eight bishops at the time to reveal how much they knew and reports claim responding letters referring to 20 accusations have surfaced.
Mr Draper is understood to have called for independent experts to investigate further, but the bishops disagreed.
He told the BBC: “I was very concerned about their unwillingness to actually expose individual priests who were leaving double lives. They were very reluctant to do that, and I felt that was totally inappropriate.
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