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Catholic church in Scotland must support abuse survivors, review says Catholic church in Scotland asks forgiveness from child abuse victims
(about 3 hours later)
The Catholic church in Scotland must address the wrongs of the past, an independent review of its handling of abuse allegations has said. The Scottish Catholic church has offered a “profound apology” to victims of child abuse and the churches’ failure to investigate and punish the culprits, after a damning independent report into its conduct.
A commission led by the Very Rev Andrew McLellan recommended that the church’s safeguarding guidelines be updated and called for survivors of abuse to be prioritised. Archbishop Philip Tartaglia, the official head of the Scottish church, told a congregation in Glasgow on Tuesday that their bishops were “shamed and pained” by the abuse suffered by children and adults over recent decades. “We say sorry. We ask forgiveness.”
The former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and one-time chief inspector of prisons, was given the job of evaluating the procedures in place to protect vulnerable children and adults and ensuring the church was “a safe place for all”. After pledging to act on an independent inquiry commissioned by the church which accused its bishops of covering-up the crimes for decades, Tartaglia said: “Child abuse is a horrific crime. That this abuse should have been carried out within the church, and by priests and religious [orders], takes that abuse to another level.
At a press conference in Edinburgh on Tuesday to set out the findings of his 11-member commission, he said: “Nothing in our independent report is more important than our first recommendation: that support for the survivors of abuse must be an absolute priority for the Catholic Church in Scotland.” “Such actions are inexcusable and intolerable. The harm the perpetrators of abuse have caused is first and foremost to their victims, but it extends far beyond them, to their families and friends, as well as to the church and wider society.”
The commission has also recommended that a public apology is made to survivors of abuse within the church. A commission chaired by Andrew McLellan, a former prisons inspector, had told the church an apology for the abuse and comprehensive action by the church to make reparations and overhaul its procedures was essential for the future of Catholicism in Scotland.
It was set up in November 2013 by the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland in response to a series of scandals, including the resignation of disgraced cardinal Keith O’Brien. McLellan said the case “which stuck with me” involved one woman repeatedly locked in a darkened room by a nun who was her carer. “The same nun sexually abused me. I told the priest in confession, the priest told the nun and together they raped me,” she said. “I was still only eight years old.”
He stepped down from the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh in February 2013 after three priests and a former priest made allegations of inappropriate behaviour against him. “This report gives the Catholic church a chance, an unrepeatable chance, to make things better. If this opportunity isn’t taken survivors will know that there’s no hope left for them in the Catholic church in Scotland,” McLellan said on Tuesday, after highlighting repeated recent pledges of action by successive popes and senior Scottish bishops.
More details soon … “If this opportunity isn’t taken many Catholics who are longing for a new beginning will feel betrayed by the church. If this opportunity isn’t taken, the public credibility of the Catholic church in Scotland will be destroyed.”
The McLellan inquiry was set up by Scotland’s bishops in November 2013 after a string of highly damaging historical abuse scandals came to light, including repeated child abuse by paedophile priests which was often covered-up or ignored, systematic abuse by staff at Fort Augustus boarding school and the admissions of sexual misconduct against adult priests by Cardinal Keith O’Brien, then the UK’s most senior Catholic.
The church’s own investigations in 2013 disclosed there were also 46 live allegations of abuse against priests made between 2006 and 2012, leading to seven prosecutions.
In 2013, there were another 15 allegations made, six of which were historical. Three priests were removed from frontline roles, and two cases are with Scottish prosecutors, with prosecutors also studying allegations of abuse by nine men at Fort Augustus between 1967 and 1992.
The inquiry by McLellan, a former moderator of the Church of Scotland, the country’s largest Protestant church, was not set up to investigate specific cases or allegations.
The Scottish church has its own parallel historical abuse inquiry under way which is expected to detail the true extent of abuse within the church. But McLellan said numerous cases in Scotland were brought to the commission’s attention.
However, the 12-member commission, which included two bishops, the former judge and Lord Advocate Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, and the broadcaster Sheena McDonald, failed to make any specific recommendations on overseeing and policing its cardinals.
One of the central complaints in the Keith O’Brien affair – the biggest crisis to hit the Scottish church in modern history – by his adult victims was that they felt powerless and unable to complain because he was cardinal.
The only person in the Catholic church worldwide able to sanction him was the pope – a factor which will hold true in any future scandal with a cardinal.
McLellan said some general recommendations on tackling a deeply-rooted culture of secrecy in the church were relevant to the O’Brien scandal but he said he could not tackle the question of a cardinal’s impunity from local control because the Scottish church itself did not have that power.
“There was nothing that the bishops themselves could do to exercise any authority over the cardinal,” he told the Guardian. But he added that the cloud of secrecy still surrounding what actually happened in the O’Brien affair also prevented the commission from offering firm judgments about solving that problem.
“I believe few Catholics in Scotland themselves know what has happened,” he said. “It would be rash for me to make any recommendations based on hearsay rather than evidence.”
Even so, the commission stated that the church’s failure to control Fort Augustus boarding school because it was seen as independent had to be addressed. In a statement unveiling his report, McLellan said: “It has been a slow and complicated business to determine who is responsible for what in dealing with the scandal at Fort Augustus.
“These structural difficulties mean nothing to survivors and nothing to the public. What the survivors need and what the public expect is that the church as a whole will take responsibility for what has happened and what must happen and refuse to take refuge in quibbles about authority,” he said.
The commission found numerous flaws in the church’s current procedures, including failing to impose the same rules and standards on all dioceses; a failure to include survivors in drafting its central policy document on safeguarding; ignoring widely accepted United Nations definitions of abuse and audit processes which did not give comparative figures or guidance on sanctions.
Among its eight headline recommendations and numerous subsidiary recommendations, the commission unanimously said:
The report stated: “Justice must be done, and justice must be seen to be done, for those who have been abused and for those against whom allegations of abuse are made.”
It added: “There are clearly parishes in which commitment to safeguarding is still resisted because of complacency and lack of interest.”
McLellan said three things had to happen. “First, and most important, a beginning will be made to heal the hurt and address the anger which survivors feel,” he said.
“Second, the Catholic church in Scotland will confront a dark part of its past and find some healing for itself. Third, a significant step will be taken in restoring public credibility for the Catholic church.”