Church guidelines fall short
Our Children, Our Church fails to follow some key recommendations of the Ferns Report, and rows back from an earlier draft
The Catholic Church's latest guidelines for dealing with child sex abuse fall short of the recommendations of the Ferns Report and could leave dioceses subject to investigation by a new State inquiry.
However, Maureen Lynott, who chaired the working group originally responsible for drafting the guidelines, has said the guidelines meet international best practice, and that recommendations in the Ferns Report not addressed in the guidelines could be "added on as a matter of practice" following discussions between the Minister for Children, Brian Lenihan, and the Church leadership.
The guidelines, published as Our Children, Our Church on 19 December, do not require Church staff to report all allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. Instead, a Director of Child Protection in each diocese will be responsible for establishing whether there are "reasonable grounds for concern" that abuse has taken place, and will report the allegation to the civil authorities only where he believes such grounds exist.
Maureen Lynott said this was "a very low threshold" for reporting, consistent with the existing national guidelines, Children First, and with international best practice.
The Ferns Report, published in October, recommended that all allegations of abuse, as well as rumours or suspicions, be reported to the civil authorities through a Church-State forum it termed the Inter-Agency Review Committee, based on procedures implemented by Bishop Eamon Walsh in Ferns.
The Ferns Report recommended that this procedure be adopted "in any case in which continuing problems or a series of problems arises in relation to child sexual abuse... Even complaints which are demonstrably untrue" should be noted by the committee, the report said, "so as to ensure the authorities have a full appreciation of all of the allegations made".
The report said the Health Services Executive (HSE) should have responsibility for convening Inter Agency Review Committees, which would include representatives of the Church, the Garda Síochána and the HSE.
Maureen Lynott said the remit of the original working group she chaired, which was tasked with producing child protection guidelines for the Catholic Church in Ireland, was to implement the national guidelines, and that this had been done.
That working group, however, disbanded in September 2004, having produced a draft guidelines document which was rejected by the Church leadership. The draft, seen by Village, contained stricter procedures for reporting allegations and concerns of abuse under which all such concerns would be referred to the civil authorities. Asked did the published guidelines "row back" from the earlier draft on the issue of reporting of allegations, Maureen Lynott said "yes it does", but said the published guidelines were consistent with the remit of the working group.
After having disbanded, the working group reconvened in January 2005, where members were invited to have their names associated with the report, and agreed to do so. The Conference of Bishops communications office has subsequently stated that the working group "unanimously" endorsed the guidelines, but this has been challenged by two members of the group, Marie Collins and Mick Waters, who each said they did not endorse the final guidelines, because of concerns about the reporting procedures. Lynott said her understanding was that the group had "unanimously endorsed" the document and had reported as such to the Church leadership.
The Minister for Justice published a motion on 14 December for the new commission of inquiry into abuse in the Dublin diocese. Mary Harney told the Dáil on 27 October that the commission would "ensure that measures in operation in Ferns, commended by the Murphy report, are also in operation in every other diocese".