Child rape victims today said they could have been saved from a paedophile priest if the current head of the Catholic Church in Ireland had taken action when he learned of the attacks 35 years ago.Cardinal Seán Brady has dismissed calls for his resignation and defended his role in a 1975 meeting where two children abused by sex offender Father Brendan Smyth were asked to take a vow of silence.
Following the meeting clergy failed to contact police.
The Cardinal said he would only step down if the Pope told him to go, but pressure mounted today as victims abused by Smyth during his subsequent 18 year reign of terror said the Cardinal had lost moral authority.
One victim of Smyth, who said she was abused by the paedophile at boarding school from 1974 to 1979, said: “This is not a witch hunt, this is about what is right.
“I just feel such sadness and such loss and there is just no need for it. If people had done what they are supposed to do and as adults, forget about the fact that they were priests.
“It is an adult’s job to protect children, regardless if it was 35 years ago or today and if he had done what he was supposed to do, I wouldn’t have been raped or abused for four of those five years.
“I just think it is so wrong. And I am one of the lucky unlucky ones, at least I can talk about it.
“I am still alive, I know two people who were abused by Brendan Smyth in that same school who have committed suicide.”
She was one of a number of victims and relatives of the abused who contacted phone-in radio shows on the BBC and RTÉ in the wake of the cardinal’s continued refusal to step down.
For the second day in a row, Dr Brady resisted calls for his resignation and said that, while he would act differently today, he had obeyed church law at the time by informing a bishop who then stopped Smyth acting as a priest.
But victims said it was indefensible that the current primate did not also call police or tell church colleagues to do so.
The Cardinal – then a part-time secretary to the then Bishop of Kilmore, the late Bishop Francis McKiernan – took notes during two meetings with children who he believed had been abused by Smyth.
The senior churchman said that his actions in 1975 had been part of a process which removed the shamed cleric’s licence to act as a priest. He maintained that Smyth’s Norbertine order was otherwise responsible for him.
Smyth was at the centre of one of the first paedophile priest scandals to rock the Catholic Church in Ireland.
A seven-month delay in extraditing Smyth to the North also collapsed the government in November 1994 when the Labour Party withdrew from its coalition with Fianna Fáil over claims that a warrant was withheld.
The repeat offender later admitted a litany of sex attacks on about 90 children in the North and South of Ireland over a 40-year period and was jailed. He died in prison in 1997.
Colm O’Gorman, who founded child abuse support group One In Four, said Dr Brady rose through the ranks in the Catholic Church hierarchy while Smyth continued to rape and abuse children for 18 years.
Asked why he did not see it as a moral obligation to ensure the police were alerted, Dr Brady today said: “Yes, I knew that these were crimes, but I did not feel that it was my responsibility to denounce the actions of Brendan Smyth to the police.”
He added: “Now I know with hindsight that I should have done more, but I thought at the time I was doing what I was required to do. Not just that, but most effectively, I can tell you, I acted with great urgency to get that evidence and to produce it and I believed that in doing so I was following the most effective route to have this stopped and that was my main concern and always has been – the safety of children.”
Dr Brady claimed that wider society handled child abuse cases differently in the 1970s.
“There was a culture of silence about this, a culture of secrecy, that’s the way society dealt with it.”
Pressed on the calls for his resignation, he added: “I will only resign if asked by the Holy Father.”
Asked if he had reconsidered resigning as a result of criticisms made since his initial refusal to step down yesterday, he said: “Certainly not. I have heard other calls for me to stay. I have been very heartened by those calls, calls of support, to stay and to continue the work of addressing this most difficult problem.
“There are lots of calls here in Armagh, where I serve, in the form of phone calls and emails from priests and people around the country.”
Last year, in the wake of damning reports into child sex abuse by Catholic clergy in Ireland, Dr Brady indicated that senior clergy should resign if it was found that their managerial failures resulted in child abuse.
He said at the time: “I would remember that child sex abuse is a very serious crime and very grave and if I found myself in a situation where I was aware that my failure to act had allowed or meant that other children were abused, well then, I think I would resign.”
Today he said: “The fact is that, 35 years ago, I was not a ’manager’, I was recording secretary with no decision-making power... I discharged my responsibilities then, which was to collect evidence... in church investigations, to determine what action the church itself would take against Brendan Smyth. I did that, I acted.”
The Cardinal said: “I played my part, the part I had 35 years ago, as a priest recording secretary to the best of my ability. We are now judging the behaviour of 35 years ago by the standards we set today and I don’t think that is fair and it’s not applied to other sectors of society.”
The Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) said the Cardinal’s position was untenable.
“Sexual abuse that could have been prevented was not, and Brendan Smyth continued to abuse children,” said the network’s director Fiona Neary.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to us or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that we agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
SIC: IOL