Comments 4
Politicians, pundits, and even a few dissenting Catholic clerics are calling upon Catholic priests to break the confessional seal in sex-abuse cases. Australian Federal Attorney General Nicola Roxon said that a federal commission investigating sexual abuse would take up the question of whether priests should be required to disclose information from sacramental confessions. Prime Minister Read more
Comments 0
Fr Oliver Brennan will never forget the morning of August 14, 2010. It was to the beginning of a personal hell that saw him uprooted from the parish community he loved and feeling alienated and unable to exercise his priestly ministry. After decades in the priesthood he now stood accused of abuse. It is a harrowing Read more
Comments 3
Research shows that sexual abuse is more likely to occur in (and be ignored by) particular kinds of institutional cultures. In particular, male-dominated organisations that lack oversight and accountability can harbour a “barrack-yard” culture that promotes physical and sexual abuse. As Marie Keenan indicates in her 2012 book Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church, Read more
Comments 0
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s, decision to establish a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has received overwhelmingly public support. We know, on the available evidence, that the wide-ranging and expensive inquiry will focus on past crimes and whether people in authority, in Gillard’s terminology, ”averted their eyes” with respect to abusers. Read more
Comments 3
The steps taken in the last 30 years to prevent the devastating trauma of child sexual abuse are making a difference. From 1990 to 2010, substantiated cases of child sexual abuse throughout the United States dropped 62 percent, according to experts David Finkelhor and Lisa Jones using a variety of sources including national surveys, FBI Read more
Comments 0
During the time of big Irish families in the pre-pill era, boys might be under less parental control than ought to be possible today when the Irish birth rate, although the highest in Europe, is a modest 2.1. So, it was not unusual for boys to get into trouble and be deemed dangers to society Read more
Comments 0
Bishop Robert Finn is the first US Catholic bishop to be convicted of a misdemeanour for failing to report suspected child abuse. Finn, the Bishop of Kansas City – St Joseph, Missouri has been sentenced to two years probation and will not serve any jail time, nor pay a fine. The offence carried a maximum Read more
Comments 0
The U.S. Catholic bishops’ point man on sexual abuse, Bishop R. Daniel Conlon of Joliet, paints a gloomy picture of the Church’s handling of sexual abuse, saying the church’s credibility is “shredded”. Conlon compared the situation to the Reformation, when “the episcopacy, the regular clergy, even the papacy were discredited.” Bishop Conlon last month told a conference of Read more
Comments 0
Seven reports reviewing child protection practices in a number of Ireland’s Catholic dioceses and religious orders have been published. The audits have found a higher incidence of abuse allegations against members of religious congregations than against priests in the four dioceses that have been audited. Reports on the audits say full compliance with child protection Read more
Comments 2
The Bishop of Clonfert in Galway has said he thought paedophilia was “a friendship that crossed a boundary line”. John Kirby has made the comments as the Catholic Church publishes 7 reports into child safe-guarding practices. It is the second batch of reviews to be carried out by the National Board for Safeguarding Children which Read more
