[A table showing the incidence of safeguarding allegations received within the Society of the Divine Word Missionary Irish British Province from January 1, 1975]
The National Board on Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church published its review of child protection at the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) Missionary Society, Archdiocese of Dublin, the Dioceses of Cloyne, Killaloe, and Meath, and congregations the Presentation Brothers, the Patrician Brothers, Benedictine, Glenstal, and the Columban Missionaries.
In relation to the Society of the Divine Word, the NBSCCC looked at case files on seven men, however it said that the information supplied by the missionary was grossly inadequate.
However, in relation to the files it found: “The existence of child safeguarding case management files within SVD IBP [Irish British Province] can only be traced back to the beginning of 2013. While the administrator has done excellent work in creating the files that the reviewers examined, from her reading of the whole archive of Review of Safeguarding Practice in the Irish British Province of the Society of the Divine Word (Divine Word Missionaries) society members’ personnel files, she could only import documents that she found. A lot of documentation was either never generated, or was removed or destroyed by parties unknown, or was kept in some file or files the existence of which has not yet been discovered.”
It found one of the men who spent some time in an SVD seminary, and of whom concerns were raised but no abuse was found while an SVD seminarian, was later transferred to a diocesan seminary where was ordained and was subsequently found to have abused children as a priest.
The review also found a second men, against whom an allegation of historical child sexual abuse had been made, was dead for several years before the allegation was received.
In one case the complaint has been made by a third party and not the alleged victim therefore, the review maintained, while the allegation has been reported to the statutory authorities, no statutory or canonical investigation can be initiated.
The four other men are out of ministry as a result of concerns about child sexual abuse, with one having already served time in jail for abuse committed in Ireland.
The report found: “Two of these men made admissions of having abused children, although no allegations against them have been received; and in the case of the other two, sufficient evidence of concern exists to justify their being asked to step aside from ministry while appropriate investigations are being conducted. In all four cases the men involved are living in an SVD IBP community house, and in the case of three of them, supervision arrangements and restrictions are in place. Two of these men were required to move to SVD IBP community houses where they would have no access to young people or vulnerable adults.”
The report also states: “The reviewers were very concerned about the potential risks involving one SVD IBP member who has admitted to extensive abuse of children in mission countries over a 20- year period, but against whom there are no complaints or allegations. It needs to be noted that this man only became a member of SVD IBP when he returned to the province from overseas, and that the Irish Provincial had no authority over him while he served abroad. Unfortunately this man’s situation was very poorly managed by the international leadership of the society at Generalate level since concerns about his ministry were first raised. He was moved from one country where the local bishop did not want him, to another country, where it would have been much more appropriate to withdraw him from ministry until his personality and behavioural problems were dealt with. However, recent evidence indicates that he abused children until he was returned to Ireland; there have been no admissions or allegations relating to him having abused in Ireland. All admissions were reported to the civil authorities by the Irish designated person.”
It adds: “While there had been three specialist assessments of this priest, in 1985, 1997 and 2004, previous provincials had not kept assessment reports on file, if such reports were ever requested by them and the current provincial was not briefed about this man’s problems when he was taking over the leadership from his predecessor. Matters were further complicated by the fact that despite a lengthy list of admissions during the most recent specialist assessment, the author of the Assessment Report (which the current provincial had in 2013 to specifically seek from the UK assessment service from which it had been commissioned in 2004) concluded that the man should be considered as being ‘low risk of abusing children. The reviewers cannot understand how such a determination was made. It needs to be said that no complaints or allegations of child abuse have been made against this priest since he returned to IBP in 1997.”
It may be worth noting that, in its introduction, the NBSCCC states that:”The Society of the Divine Word Irish British Province was late to take up its responsibilities for child safeguarding, when it is considered that it was 1996 when Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response, the Report of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Advisory Committee on Child Sexual Abuse by Priests and Religious was published. Perhaps it was an oversight that the members of the Irish Missionary Union were not involved in the development of that seminal guidance document.”
Read the report in full here
101 priests in single diocese accused of abuse in 40 years (Irish Examiner)
