Report to Reveal Catholic Abuse Cover-Ups

Thursday, November 26 06:25 am
ITN

Archbishops will be named and shamed later when a report is published into decades of cover-ups of child sex abuse by Catholic priests.

Hundreds of allegations were mishandled in the Dublin Archdiocese, including crimes not being reported to police.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission, the third inquiry in the last four years, will find that senior clerics put the interests of the church ahead of those of defenceless children.

The pattern of senior clerics moving abusers from parish to parish rather than dealing with the problem will also be addressed.

The 700-page report includes 45 potted histories of priests from 1975 to 2004 who were investigated by the Commission.

It is understood only ten priests will be named, as they are either dead or in jail, with the rest given aliases.

The report will detail horrific abuse stories the Commission was told by victims, the response of Bishops and Archbishops and how gardai and health authorities reacted.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern will publish the report at Government Buildings.

Cardinal Desmond Connell ordered a trawl through the diocesan secret archives in 1995 to determine how many clerics had been accused of child abuse. Only 17 names were given to gardai.

His successor, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who has pushed for full disclosure of abuse, later found that since 1940 more than 400 children claimed to have been abused by at least 152 priests in the Dublin area.

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