Breda O’Brien, helmet-haired schoolteacher and Irish Times columnist clashed with her paper’s Religious Affairs correspondent Patsy McGarry on Tonight with Vincent Browne last night. It offered a bad-tempered glimpse into how RTE’s outlandish libelling of Father Kevin Reynolds has given conservative commentators such as Breda, David Quinn and Senator Ronan Mullen an unexpected opportunity to reclaim some moral high-ground lost in the collapse of trust in the Catholic Church in Ireland since the mid-1990s.
Vincent Browne: “Were you surprised at the announcement by somebody in RTE communications office on Friday evening, when asked if there would be resignations, he said ‘rolled heads don’t learn anything’.”
Patsy McGarry: “Vincent, I listened to that interview with Mary Wilson on Drivetime. I was absolutely shocked by the demeanour of the man concerned, considering he himself had been a very prominent and effective journalist. I’m talking about Kevin Dawson. Now he has a role, a different role to play but I felt the stance by RTE, which he reflected, was utterly inappropriate to the gravity of what they had conceded had happened. That is had to be properly investigated. We’re long beyond the days when any institution can be trusted to investigate itself, whether it be in media, or any other institution, banks, church, politics, we’ve so many examples now at this stage in our own society. That RTE must have… that two inquiries wouldn’t meet the public demand.
<Browne: “Breda, It would seem to be..there’s been no statement at all from the RTE authority in regard to this. And the indications are the RTE authority, as is usual for it, has played dead.”
Breda O’Brien: “Yeah, it’s really quite extraordinary and it must be extremely damaging to RTE that has acted as the guardian of the guardians that when it comes to themselves, that they’re completely unwilling to fess up and put their hands up. If you don’t mind me saying so though, I think Kevin Reynolds is a very, very lucky man, in this regard. That he was accused of fathering a child and not of rape alone. Because if he had been accused of rape alone, my guess is that we wouldn’t be sitting here now. Because he had a scientifically verifiable way of proving his innocence. And if it had been rape alone, it would have been one person’s word against the other. He would have been just as innocent as he is today and he would have no possibility of proving it.”
Browne: “Yes.”
O’Brien: “And that’s really. You have to ask yourself how that state of affairs came about. That it’s priests and nuns guilty as charged. How did that happen? The Iona Institute did research on what the public think is the rate of abuse among priests. And it’s really scary reading, Vincent. Seventy per cent of people overestimate it. Seventy per cent of people overestimate the rate of abuse by clergy. Forty two per cent think that one in five priests are actually abusers. There’s five per cent who think over 90 per cent of priests are abusers. And, as we know, the rate, the only Irish figures we have are ones you talk about regularly, the Savi Report. And then we have American figures, and they’re between three and four per cent of sexual abuse is carried out by clergy. So you have a vast overestimation. And you have to ask yourself – where does that come from? What’s the climate that creates that? Because they’re not learned..the public aren’t learning that from personal experience. They don’t know of..if you know 20 priests, which is not unusual in Ireland, four of them aren’t child abusers so why do forty two per cent of people think that they are? And I think that there has been a climate, which has built up, because, first of all, it was so shocking that clergy would abuse at all. Then the church handled it so badly. And were so poor at dealing with it themselves. But now…”
Browne: “That hardly captures it now, but..go on, yeah.”
O’Brien: “No, ok, whatever terms, I’ll agree with them. Disastrous, awful, appalling…”
Browne: “Yeah but they were complicit in that they covered it up.”
O’Brien: “Yeah. No argument Vincent.”
Browne: “The institution covered it up, what is singularly…The issue with the Catholic Church, with regard to all this, is not the, so much the incidence of abuse for, as you, as you say, the numbers of priests who abused is very low. But no other institution has engaged in that kind of, in a comprehensive cover-up, cover-up of this criminality.”
O’Brien: “I, I would agree with you there has been a cover-up. I think there has also been no acknowledgment of change. And there is very little acknowledgement that these things happen in other sectors of society. I, the point I was going to make was that as time has gone by even Maeve Lewis, of One in Four, has said that there’s been a disproportionate amount of attention paid to clerical abuse, to the detriment of the vast majority of people who have not been abused by clergy. And that atmosphere, that excessive…”
Browne: “And have been abused otherwise.”
O’Brien: “Yes, yeah, I beg your pardon. People that have been abused by people who are not clergy, which is the vast majority. That has led to a climate where this kind of thing can happen. And that’s not just a question for RTE. Like bashing RTE is a grand old hobby but it’s a question for the media in general. It’s a question for civil society. And it’s a question for all of us to say ‘how did that atmosphere build up where a completely…'”
McGarry: “Can I explain…”
O’Brien: “He, he, he..No just one second Patsy, let me finish this…”
[Talk over each other]
McGarry: “Breda comes from the provisional wing of the Catholic church, and never resists an opportunity to have a go at the media. And has been doing this for years – often to the detriment of the emergence of this tragedy. The reason this has happened…”
O’Brien: “That’s a really serious allegation Mr McGarry.”
McGarry: “Well you and others, you and others.”
O’Brien: “You have just said ‘detriment of the emergence of this tragedy’.”
McGarry: “May I explain?”
O’Brien: “No, Patsy. Just stop.”
McGarry: “May I continue? Please.”
Browne: “No, no…”
[They Talk over each other]
Browne: “There might be a serious issue there.”
O’Brien: “There might be a serious issue there. Do you mean to say that I have been aparte in a way that has been to the detriment of the revelation of abuse? Did you say that? And did you mean that?”
McGarry: “I’m saying Breda is that you and other people have found yourselves in a position where you’ve defended the church in contexts where and have, where things happened that were not defensible, that delayed the emergence of this story. You cast doubt on the way, for instance you cast doubt on.”
O’Brien: “So you are saying that I defended the church in a way delayed the emergence of the story?”
McGarry: “You cast doubt on people like Christine Buckley, when she first came out about the abuse in Goldenbridge, there was doubt cast on…now I can’t remember all the incidences off the top of my head.”
O’Brien: “I’d like you to produce chapter and verse Patsy because you have done extremely, you’ve made an extremely serious allegation and you’ve provided the most perfect example of why this climate has built up.”
McGarry: “No, let me explain.”
O’Brien: “Because anybody that I’ve, who challenges the consensus on this, and says there is more that one side to this gets this treatment, gets called people who have delayed the truth emerging. Now what has happened.”
McGarry: “May I…”
O’Brien: “The climate has built up where innocent people have…”
McGarry: “Let me explain why that climate has built up…”
O’Brien: “You’ve already explained it…”
[They talk over each other]
Browne: “Let her explain, let her finish and then you can come back in.”
O’Brien: “You’ve already explained.”
>McGarry: “No, I haven’t. That was only on my route to explaining.”
O’Brien: “On your route, you decided to do a little bit of character assassination, Patsy.”
McGarry: No I’m talking….about a group, grouping.
O’Brien: You’re talking about an individual sitting by your side, Patsy. And I resent it deeply. And I think it is one of the problems that we have here in this country. That anybody who says that it is utterly and totally disgraceful that seventy per cent of the population overestimate clerical child abuse.”
McGarry: “I didn’t say that.”
O’Brien: “I am saying it. I’m saying that. You’re saying that anybody who is making those kind of points is somebody who is in some sense an apologist for what goes on.”
McGarry: “No, I’m not saying…”
O’Brien: “There is no balance, there is no balance.”
McGarry: “I’m saying. I’m attacking you in the sense you’re attacking the media. May I make a point here? There reason that all this has happened. And I am not for one minute defending what has happened in this or other similar contexts. But the reason that you have findings like that, that are outrageous by the Iona Institute or the Amarach research team, on behalf of the Iona Institute…”
O’Brien: “Clarify what you mean by outrageous.”
McGarry: “The findings are. I think it’s outrageous that so many people think priests are guilty of abuse..Because this is 2005 , we have had four shocking, statutory reports, prepared by judges of this country, not by the media, which looked at what happened in Ferns in 2005, which over nine years brought us the Ryan Report in May of 2009, which brought us the Murphy Report in November 2009 and in July of this year brought us the Cloyne Report. Don’t tell me the media is responsible for the climate in which these awful things can happen. It’s not the media, it’s the abuse that has created this problem.”
O’Brien: “I don’t argue with you in the slightest.”
McGarry: “You do. That’s the problem. You blame the media all the time. That’s the problem and that’s the issue between you and me.”
O’Brien: “Pasty, we’re here talking about an innocent man, who would have gone to his grave, accused of rape, if he hadn’t been also accused of.”
McGarry: “That’s pure supposition.”
O’Brien: “OK.”
McGarry: “I’m totally with Fr Reynolds.”
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Watch full show here