Bishops 'covered up child abuse'

Dublin : Roman Catholic Church leaders in Dublin spent decades sheltering child-abusing priests from the law and most fellow clerics turned a blind eye, an investigation ordered by Ireland's government concluded.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who handed over more than 60,000 previously secret church files to the three-year investigation, said he felt deep shame and sorrow for how previous archbishops presided over endemic child abuse. Martin said his four predecessors, including retired Cardinal Desmond Connell, must have understood that priests' molestation and rape of boys and girls "was a crime in both civil and canon law."

Thursday's 720-page report focused on why church leaders in the Dublin Archdiocese did not tell police about a single abuse complaint against a priest until 1995.

By then, the investigators found, successive archbishops and their senior deputies — among them qualified lawyers, already had compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940. The investigators also dug up a paper trail documenting the church's long-secret insurance policy, taken out in 1987, to cover potential lawsuits and compensation demands. The report cited documents showing how church officials learned about some cases only when devoutly Catholic police received complaints from children or their parents — but handed responsibility back to church leaders to sort out the problems themselves.

Thursday's report detailed "sample" cases of 46 priests who faced 320 documented complaints, although the investigators said they were confident the priests had abused many more children than that. They cited testimony from one priest who admitted abusing more than 100 children, and another priest who said he abused a child approximately every two weeks for 25 years.

Convictions

Just 11 of the 46 ultimately were convicted of abusing children — typically decades after church leaders learned of their crimes, while two others are scheduled to face Dublin criminal court actions within months. Fourteen are dead and most of the rest have been defrocked or barred from parish duties. Just six are still active priests.

"A few [priests] were courageous and brought complaints to the attention of their superiors. The vast majority simply chose to turn a blind eye," the report said.