Published: Wednesday, 10th March, 2010 5:00pm

Reflections with Fr. Ultan McGoohan

Safeguarding children

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Visit to Rome

The recent visit by the Irish bishops to meet the Pope in Rome regarding the sexual abuse crisis in the Irish Church was a public relations disaster. Victim groups felt that they did not hear the Church leadership accepting its responsibility for dealing ineffectually with abusers and creating the circumstances that allowed them to abuse repeatedly.

The wider Catholic community also felt let down by the Rome meeting. We wanted to hear something new and hopeful and dare we say it, radical. We wanted to feel that this crisis that has engulfed the Church and continued now for almost 20 years is finally being resolved. Our expectations were high, and maybe too high.

For their part the bishops feel that the meeting with the Pope is just one step in a longer process. We now wait for the Pope's Letter to the People of Ireland that is due before Easter. We hope that the letter will go some way towards healing the pain of victims and that it will encourage the Church to examine the mindsets and culture that allowed these terrible abuses to persist for so long. It is only after this painful examination of conscience that the Church can emerge purified and energised to return to its primary mission of proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel.

Policy

It would be easy to get the impression that the Church is still struggling to come to terms with the sexual abuse issue. In fact a huge amount of work has been carried out in dioceses and parishes across Ireland to put in place structures to ensure that the abuses of the past will not easily happen again.

In the Diocese of Kilmore every parish has at least one child safeguarding representative. It is that person's job to ensure that the parish child safeguarding policy is being implemented.

All parish activities that involve young people are subject to the parish child safeguarding policy. For example there always has to be more than one adult supervising children. All adults working with children, including clergy, are subject to garda vetting to ensure they have no criminal convictions in relation to offences against children or other offences that might make them unsuitable to work with young people.

Proper records are kept of all activities involving young people including records of attendance, the names of adults present and a record of anything unusual that may have occurred during the activity, such as a child becoming ill or having a fall.

All these policies and procedures are designed to ensure that the Church is a safe place for children and that adults working with young people are properly trained and are respectful of appropriate boundaries.

The structures in place at parish level mirror and are accountable to an overall diocesan structure, which includes the Diocesan Safeguarding Children Committee that initiated and helped to formulate and review the various policies that are being implemented at parish level. This committee has been facilitated in its work by two trainers who have worked with clergy and parish representatives in the area of child protection and are assisting parishes in digesting and putting in place child safeguarding policies and procedures.

Where an allegation or suspicion of abuse arises, the bishop is guided by a Diocesan Advisory Panel comprising professional people who advise him on all aspects of case management, including pastoral care and co-operation with the civil authorities.

National

What is happening at parish and diocesan level mirrors what is happening at national level through the work of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in Ireland, whose task is to monitor the safeguarding of children in the Catholic Church. It is a fully independent body. Its core tasks are: to ensure that Church policies and procedures for the safeguarding of children are fully publicised throughout the Church and reflect best practice; to monitor the implementation of such policies by the Church leadership; and to issue publicly a full report each year on how the Church leadership is implementing its policies.

Promises

The Church has still a long way to go to heal the pain of the past. But at present and looking towards the future the Catholic Church in Ireland is ironically leading the way on child safeguarding. In 2010 the Church is probably one of the safest places a child can be. In this area we hold ourselves to a higher standard than the state. This should not make us complacent. For the only guarantee that children remain safe from abuse is the eternal vigilance of the entire community.

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