Anger As Church Withholds Abuse Claims From Own Watchdog

Baby shoes were hung on the railings of Pro Cathedral last year to represent children who were abused (Photocall)
Despite three devastating reports into the mishandling of clerical child sex abuse, it seems the Catholic Church in Ireland has still not learned its lesson.
There was outrage this week after it emerged that dioceses and religious orders had hidden more than two hundred abuses cases from its own watchdog.
The head of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, Ian Elliott said he considered resigning in protest, but stayed on in the job because he is passionate about "making a difference for children."
The board was set up by the church in 2006 to monitor its children protection practices and the church promised to notify all allegations to it immediately.
This week it revealed that 272 new abuse cases were reported to it and to the Gardai over the past 12 months, an increase of 75 on the previous year.
Most of the cases are historical.
But there was a furious reaction when the board revealed that just 53 new allegations had been reported to it by the Church authorities, until it did a final check in advance of publishing the Annual Report.
It then discovered that there were in fact 219 further cases that the church had failed to report to the NBSCCC.
In further development, it also emerged that, until recent weeks, bishops and religious orders were obstructing a nationwide audit of abuse cases by the NBSCCC for "legal reasons".
The audit was requested by the church itself, in the wake of the publication of the Murphy Commission Report, and controversy over child protection practices in the Cloyne diocese in 2008.
Church authorities had previously refused to co-operate with an audit by the HSE citing data protection concerns.
Until March this year, they had cited legal advice with the same concerns as a reason for not co-operating with its own NBSCCC audit, although they have now agreed to hand over the information on the basis of confidentiality.
Furthermore, any findings on child protection practices in dioceses or involving religious congregations, may only be published with the permission of the relevant bishop or religious superior.
Reviews have been completed in three dioceses already, but nothing has been made public.
The NSBCCC also revealed that the church withdrew funding from its training programs in child protection last October.
Abuse victim Marie Collins said the church showed "breathtaking hypocrisy" in promoting the board's work in a recent pastoral letter while at the same time obstructing it.
"Telling the world that they are committed to implementing fully all child-protection policies, while at the same time insuring that non-compliance by any bishop cannot be made public without the permission of that bishop, is a farce," she said.
Andrew Madden, who was abused as a child by a priest in Dublin, said it was "shocking" that the board could not comment publicly on its findings without the permission of the bishop.
Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald said: "Anything less than full co-operation with a board, whose purpose is to investigate the church's compliance with child protection procedures, cannot be tolerated."
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