THE TRUE SCALE OF THE GLOBAL BETRAYAL OF INNOCENCE

(By Brian Mark Hennessy)

It is very difficult at times to understand fully the extent of the grave and widespread proliferation of child abuse throughout the world. As a parent, as so many readers maybe, it is also impossible to imagine how utterly shattered you would be if you were to discover that a child of your own had been abused in any way. Yet somewhere in this world, daily, perhaps hourly, many parents do come to learn that the innocence of the childhood of a son or a daughter has been ravaged by a sexual predator of children. In most cases that information will come as an incomprehensible and bewildering shock that promotes inordinate anger. I remember my mother’s reaction when I told her how I had been abused by a priest of the Comboni Missionary Order when I was a seminarian at the Mirfield St Peter Claver’s Seminary of the Comboni Missionary Order in the 1960s. I told my mother during a “heart to heart” when she was in her eighties and I was, by then, in my sixties. There was a look of horror on her face. It was incomprehensible to her. She was struck by a sense of great grief that she did not know at the time – and guilt for never having been able to protect me from the sexual onslaught I suffered over a two-week period at the hands of a Catholic priest when locked into the infirmary that he controlled. Her deep distress had made me wish that I had never opened my mouth. At that moment I would have gladly kicked myself for not remaining silent.

My father had already passed away by then. He was Irish to the very core and an un-swerving, un-compromising, totally committed Catholic. My mother blessed the fact that he had never known of the abuse – because she knew that it would have destroyed utterly both his life and his faith. In some ways it did. I had been his first-born son. He had coaxed me from the touch-line at every football match that I had played. He had bought me my first cricket bat and taught me how to keep it “springy” with linseed oil. He had made me a fishing rod out of a bamboo cane so that together we could catch ravenous crabs in the seaside pools. We were intimately connected. We were almost as one being. He was so proud on the day that I went to the seminary and would have thanked God for that blessing. Following the abuse, however, I rejected him. I conflated the abuse of a priest with my father’s strict Catholicism – and I hardly ever visited my father again – until he was on his death-bed. My years since have been spent in deep remorse for my act of callousness – if that is what it was.

In the sixties when my abuse had been perpetrated against me, the world was a different place. Communications were slower. I remember writing letters to old school friends – and then watching the postman go from door to door for weeks, if not months, in anticipation of receiving a letter in reply. Once received it would be read over and over again – and shared with all. How different it is today. We finger a message to someone the other side of the world on our hand-held devices and often receive a response in minutes – if not seconds. We can even conduct a digital chat in real time. The technological world has shrunk the delivery time of all communications and broadened our knowledge of world events. Whether or not that is a good thing, or what we wish for, we now have the brutality of the world at our finger-tips. We can no longer be ignorant of distant wars, geological or tempestuous catastrophes and human suffering of all kinds. We need to ask ourselves sometimes whether this is making us more and more immune to suffering or if it increases our concern. If the former indifference is the mainstream reaction, then the future of the world will become dispassionate and heartless. We must not allow this to happen.

I will tell you why that is an imperative – by way of an example. At the time that I was abused by a priest in the 1960s, child sexual abuse did not repeatedly hit the headlines – and other forms of physical and psychological child cruelty and torture were not a regular feature of the pages of the daily press as they sometimes are today. The heartless use of children as child soldiers was virtually unheard of – and ritual killings of African albino youths would have been beyond our imaginations.

That was then, but to this mix today, we must add the enormous scale of the sale of children into slavery, child prostitution and the use of children to provide pornographic literature and film to satisfy depraved adult appetites. In the 1960s when I was abused by a priest, the population of England was about forty million. The population of children today in the Philippines in which I temporarily reside, is the same as the total population of England in 1960 – about forty million.

It is difficult to imagine an England in the 1960s comprised totally of children – but think on it for a moment. Think that everybody you would or could possibly meet or see was a child. Now imagine if the scope of child sexual abuse in that fictitious England was the same as it is estimated to be today in the Philippines – almost 25% of all children – in other words 10 million children. In my 1960’s example of a fictitious England of 40 million children, one in every four children you would see or meet would have been abused. I ask the reader to stop for a minute and ask yourself, “How does that make you feel?” Are you horrified – or are you immune to the force of this shocking statistic?

That figure of 10 million is almost incomprehensible, but that is the estimate of Bernadette Madrid, head of the University of the Philippines-Manila child protection unit. Madrid stated, during the Third Forensic Science Symposium organized by UP Diliman-Natural Sciences Research Institute that overall, “24.4 percent of Filipino children have experienced sexual abuse. If you divide that by gender, 28.7% of the victims of sexual abuse were boys, while 20.1 % were girls. What it means is that at least one in four children in the Philippines has experienced sexual abuse. If you have a hundred million population (as the Philippines does today) of which 40 million are children, then one fourth of that would be at least 10 million. That’s 10 million children in one country (the Philippines) that have experienced sexual abuse.”

Moving on, I accept that it is not possible to extrapolate the numbers of children sexually abused in the Philippines to a global figure around the whole of the world – for there is no direct evidence for such a calculation. Yet we do know that significant numbers, mostly estimates made by researchers, of abused children have been revealed in many countries. In the United States, for example, which has a population more than three times that of the Philippines, the “Peaceful Hearts Foundation” has asserted that their informed estimate of the number of child abuse “Survivors” in the United States is about 42 million out of a total population today of well over 300 million. In percentage terms that is lower than in the Philippines. Nevertheless, their research indicates that, “Most children are abused by someone they know and trust. Of these, an estimated 60% of perpetrators of sexual abuse are known to the child, but are not close family members; they are friends, babysitters, childcare providers, neighbors etc. About 30% of the perpetrators are family members, e.g., fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins. Just 10% of perpetrators are strangers to the child. In most cases, the perpetrator is male regardless of whether the victim is a boy or girl.

Above, I have only provided figures from two countries of the estimated extent of child sexual abuse. Those two countries have a joint population of about 450 million and an estimated combined incidence of 52 million children who have been sexually abused. The population of the world in August 2016 was 7.5 billion. Whilst it would be statistically wrong to attempt it, if a simple extrapolation of the global number of child sexual abuse victims from that number could even be reasonably contemplated – it would exceed 800 million children. God forbid that it is anything like that, but we simply do not know – and never will. One reason for this is that many abused children will never reveal the extent of the abuse committed against them and will possibly never understand and nor be able to define how their future lives will be affected by the psychological trauma.

Abused children have no powers to defend themselves. They are helpless to fend off predators. They rely, often in vain, on the adults of this world to protect them. Many child Victims may have self-perceptions of shame and guilt. Some accept, for the most part that what has happened has happened. Others are so frequently abused that they may even believe it is the norm. Thus, Victims themselves are often very slow to come forward with information. My own experience, was that over many years I needed to rationalize the fact of my innocence and expel any sense of shame and complicity out of the original abuse scenario before I could even begin to categorise it as “abuse”.

Such rationalization can take a very long time. William J. Cromie of the Harvard News Office wrote about such phenomena following investigations at Harvard University. He stated: “When questioned closely by psychologists from Harvard University about their feelings, victims of childhood sexual abuse revealed some surprising impressions. First, the abuse apparently was not seen as traumatic, terrifying, life threatening, or violent at the time. “It hurt,” said one man who was raped as a boy, and after a while I knew it was wrong, but not at the beginning.”

Only two out of the 27 interviewed at Harvard recalled feeling traumatized at the time, report the psychologists Susan Clancy and Richard McNally. Some psychologists believe that forgetting childhood sexual abuse is a deep-seated unconscious blocking out of the event, an involuntary mechanism that automatically keeps painful memories out of consciousness. However, Clancy and McNally’s work leads them to conclude that it’s just ordinary forgetting. Clancy asserts, “Memories of childhood sexual assault can slip from awareness in the same way that ordinary memories can.”

However, that “everyday forgetting” does not necessarily exclude voluntary suppression, insufficient reminders, or memory avoidance. McNally adds: “A failure to think about something is not the same as being unable to remember it”. The research also showed that later when the violations were recalled, all 27 of those assaulted reported multiple negative effects from the abuse, such as loss of trust in people, difficulties with relationships, sexual problems, loss of self- esteem, mental health problems, or alienation”.

It can be deduced from that statement of McNally that it may be that the adult “recovered” memories of the assaults are often seen as traumatic, rather than the childhood event itself being seen that way, and thus the recall of the event is what is responsible for the adverse impacts later in the Victim’s life. I can relate to that experience, because my adult sudden awareness that I was abused when I was a minor caused nothing less than a “panic attack” – during which I swayed back and forth with my head in my hands and crying repeatedly out loud, “Oh my God, he abused me! Oh my God, he abused me!”

There is another reason, however, why many children throughout the world have not yet even begun to fully unravel themselves from the shifting obscurities of the recesses of their minds. Of course, many may never do so. Nevertheless, every Survivor of abuse is aware of the power of those, whom necessarily, they would need to accuse if they were to “go public”. They know it as “power’ because that is the nature of the physical and moral pressure that was exerted upon them at the time of abuse by the abuser. Survivors of child abuse were “Victims” in every sense of the word at the time of the abuse for they had no ability to fully understand, in a mature sense, what was happening to them, let alone the physical strength to repel the adult abuser – who had gone to some lengths, in most cases, to befriend the guileless child in the first instance.

If the abuse took place in an institutional context, the “image” of the powerful abuser may be extended to other members of the same institution and even to the institution itself. In this context, an extension of antipathetical wariness may have been enhanced by the Victim’s sense of embedded “Institutional Denial”. When that is indeed evident, the “Denial” can be formidable in both its character and execution. The Catholic Church, for example, have shown themselves, globally, to be willing to expend billions in US dollar terms, to protect themselves. In comparison, a large number of Victims have no such resources to risk on a legal suit of unknown outcomes. When Victims seek to reveal their abuse, they know, intrinsically, that they will be taking on not just the abuser, but the whole institute which has deep pockets – and they know that institutes are in the mode of “denial” – even when they are fully aware that the abuse took place.

A Victim’s realisation that they will face such institutional denial and the institution’s almost limitless resources at every juncture may not just be daunting, but overwhelming. That is why so many Victims are not prepared to seek justice – and remain forever silent. Of course, there is a psychological impact to such silence –  because “not telling the story” perpetuates many of the adverse impacts related to the abuse. I know myself that there are a number of Victims, who were abused at the Comboni Missionaries’ Mirfield seminary who, so far, have been reluctant for a variety of reasons to take a leap into the unknown and seek justice. Many have simply not yet come to terms with the psychological impacts of the abuse.

My personal experience of such “institutional denial” is that the Institution, the Comboni Missionary Order of Verona Italy, will go to the extremes in their outright denial of the endemic abuse at their Mirfield seminary establishment – even in the face of previous statements made by themselves to the effect that they were aware of the abuse. The other tactic they use is “silence” and they believe that that makes them unaccountable in some way. Knowing the truth of the abuse that I personally experienced, however, I do not buy their guise of innocence – in whatever cloak of mendacity they dress up their denials. They have shown themselves, in extremis, to be mendaciously callous – as has been demonstrated by their recent, unsuccessful attempt to destroy one victim with false criminal charges in the Italian Criminal Tribunal of Verona.

Globally, the Catholic Church, behind whose facade the Comboni Missionary Order hides, has made many attempts to prevent cases of abuse getting into a court-room. Recently, in New York, the Diocese of the economically-astute, long-term strategist, Cardinal Dolan, expended some $2-million alone simply to obstruct a proposed time limit extension on getting abuse cases to court. They use “Denial” and “Obstruction” – in every which sense it may be facilitated – to choke off the evidence of their ageless complicity in the crimes of child sexual abuse. Their reputations for so doing are not so much just “tarnished” as “obliterated”.

My purpose here, however, is not to beat my drum once again about the gross failures of the Comboni Missionary Order of Verona, Italy, to admit, finally, the sexual abuse committed by members of their Order that has been known to them for some five long decades already. Nor is it to revisit, specifically, the vacuous chuntering of the Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of New York about the “merciful” nature of his legal protectionism. I want the readers of this blog today to remember that scandalous, indeed horrifying, potential figure of the world-wide scale of depraved adult sexual and other forms of cruel, physical and psychological abuse of gullible, innocent children. That potential, but impossible figure to verify, is 800 million and greater than the combined populations of the United States, Brazil, Russia and the Philippines. It is an incomprehensible figure of child victims of abuse. Even if you halve it to 400 million – or divide it again to 200 million – it remains incomprehensible and shocking beyond belief. Whatever the true figure is, we shall never know, but I have faith that most readers, who for the first time are confronted with the potential, global scale of child abuse, will be both distressed and horrified at such an adult “ betrayal of innocence”.

I give the last word to the UN Special Rapporteur Report (2014) on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Najat Maalla M’jid: “Changes in the nature and extent of the sale and sexual exploitation of children reveal preoccupying trends. Even though this issue has gained increased visibility over the past years, thanks to the joint efforts of numerous stakeholders, millions of children worldwide are still victims of sexual exploitation today and have their childhood stolen. The phenomenon has developed and become increasingly complex. Risk factors are growing and multiplying. The social tolerance for these crimes, impunity, corruption and precarious socio-economic situations remain among the most challenging obstacles to overcome in combating this scourge”.

It is quite clear that statistically, just because you do not hear of sexual abuse of children in your own neighborhood – you should not believe for a moment that it is not there. If you do hear of it, or even suspect the possibility of it, my plea is that you have the courage to report it. I know it is a challenge to do so – as on two occasions in my life I felt compelled to do so – and did so. It is not easy, especially if the person you are reporting is a neighbour or is otherwise known to you. Whatever the circumstances, it is your adult duty to protect the helpless child. We have provided details of whom you may contact on this blog before, but we repeat it again below. In addition, if you yourself have been abused as a child and you are still affected by the impacts of that abuse, then do seek help. To that end we include helplines in our list.

WORLDWIDE LIST OF FIRST RESPONDER TELEPHONE NUMBERS FOR REPORTING SUSPICIONS OF INSTANCES OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND HELPLINES FOR THOSE SUFFERING THE EFFECTS OF CHILD ABUSE

United Kingdom

Reporting Abuse as a first Responder in the United Kingdom – always call the Police on the 999 emergency Police number or the 101 non-emergency Police number.

Alcoholics Anonymous (GB) : help@alcoholics-anonymous,org.uk or Tel 0800 9177 650

UK National Drugs Helpline: 0800 77 66 00

Drug Wise: Twitter @DrugWise UK, or Tel 077121 52 99 36, or harry@drugwisw.org.uk

Drug Rehabilitation: info@openmindsrehab.com or Tel 01978 312 120 (daytime) or 07736 248 851 (nights)

Narcotics Anonymous UK helpline: 0300 999 1212

Lifeline heloline: 0161 839 2054

NSPCC – Action for Children: Help@nspcc.org.uk

NSPCC – Adult Callers: 0808 800 5000, Childline 0800 1111

National Helpline: help@stopitnow.org.uk or Tel 0808 1000 900

NAPAC Supporting Recovery from Childhood Abuse: info@napac.org.uk

Survivors Trust : 0808 801 0818

National Suicide Prevention Samaritans UK & ROI  Hotline: +44 (0) 8457 90 90 90 (UK – local rate) Hotline: +44 (0) 8457 90 91 92 (UK minicom) Hotline: 1850 60 90 90 (ROI – local rate) Hotline: 1850 60 90 91 (ROI minicom) Website: samaritans.org E-mail Helpline: jo@samaritans.org Survivors UK, Unit 1, Queen Anne Terrace, Sovereign Court, The Highway, London E1W 3HH: info@survivorsuk.org

Rape Crisis England and Wales: rcewinfo@rapecrisis.org.uk

Mind – the Mental Health Charity for those who have suffered Sexual Abuse:

Adult Helpline 0844 847 7879, Parent and child helpline 1800 155 1800

Bishops’ Conference of Scotland Catholic Safeguarding Organisation: tcampbell@scottishcatholicsafeguarding.org.uk

National Office for Safeguarding children in the Catholic Church in Ireland, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare: ann.doyle@safeguarding.ie and teresa.devlin@safeguarding.ie

Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland: sbnisupport@hscni.net

Tusla – Child and Family Agency, Brunel Building, Heuston South Quarter, Dublin, Republic of Ireland: info@tusla.ie

The Church’s Child Protection Advisory Service: info@ccpas.co.uk

Terence McKiernan, Bishop Accountability Organisation: terry@bishop-accountability.org and ann@bishop-accountability.org

United Kingdom Childrens’ Helplines  There-4-Me Childline UK – 0800 1111 Muslim Youth Helpline – 0808 808 2008 Childline Scotland – 0800 44 1111 NSPCC: English – 0808 800 5000 Welsh – 0808 100 2524 Bengali – 0800 096 7714 Gujurati – 0800 096 7715 Hindi – 0800 096 7716 Punjabi – 0800 096 7717 Urdu – 0800 096 7718  Breathing Space – 0800 838587 Connexions – 080 800 13 2 19 Birmingham Space – 0800 072 5070  Samaritans – 08457 90 90 90 Runaway Helpline – 0808 800 70 70 Careline – 0181 514 1177 Youth 2 Youth – 020 8896 3675 Girls Space – 0800 072 5070 Get Connected – 0800 808 4994 Support Line – 020 8554 9004 Muslim Youth Helpline – 0808 808 2008

United States of America

Survivors of sexual abuse living in the United States of America and Canada are advised, (without any liability of this site), to consider making contact with the following help organisations and professionals who are able to assist…..

Alcoholism: Alcoholics Anonymous meetings exist throughout the world and the doors are always open to newcomers. Start here to find a meeting in your area: www.aa.org/pages/en_US/find-local-aa. Once you get comfortable, look for a sponsor who honors your trauma background. If you are the loved one of an alcoholic, start here to find local Al-Anon or Alateen meetings: al-anon.org/find-a-meeting.

Other substance abuse: Narcotics Anonymous meetings also are held in many places. Start here to find a meeting: www.na.org/meetingsearch.

Childhelp: A resource about child abuse and neglect for kids, parents and teachers is at www.childhelp.org.

International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation: a resource for professionals and the public. Its website includes a “find a therapist” link here: www.isst-d.org/default.asp?contentID=18.

International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies: Though primarily a resource for professionals, it does offer a “Find a Clinician” link at www.istss.org/find-a-clinician.aspx.

MaleSurvivor.org: This is, in my opinion, the best resource available for male sexual abuse survivors. It is directed by clinicians, survivors, academics, researchers and advocates who serve for limited terms. MaleSurvivor.org offers recovery weekends, a great reading list, resources for finding a therapist, safe chat rooms for survivors, and more.

Mental Health America: an advocacy and support agency with local affiliates all over the country (www.mentalhealthamerica.net). It offers a wealth of information about mental health issues and can help you find local affiliates and other mental health resources. They also have online mental health screenings that help individuals and loved ones get a sense of what mental health issue they may be confronting.

National Center on Elder Abuse: As more people are living longer, elder abuse is becoming a greater national problem. This group (www.ncea.aoa.gov) has online resources about elder abuse. Their elder care locator will help you find the local agency to whom to report elder abuse: eldercare.gov/Eldercare.NET/Public/Index.aspx or 800-677-1116.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: Resources for survivors and individuals in current domestic violence situations, including abusers: 800-799-SAFE, or www.thehotline.org.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: A 24/7 resource for anyone thinking about suicide and for friends and relatives concerned about a loved one: 800-273-TALK, or www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network): RAINN is a good resource for those who have been sexually assaulted as adults or as young people: rainn.org/get-information.

Sidran Traumatic Stress Institute: Sidran’s website offers a host of information for survivors and for loved ones (www.sidran.org/resources/for-survivors-and-loved-ones), an extensive reading list (www.sidran.org/resources/essential-readings-in-trauma) and links to many other resources (www.sidran.org/resources/links).

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests: SNAP (www.snapnetwork.org) is an effective social justice advocacy organization that works to prevent child sexual abuse, especially by clergy.

SNAP Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, PO Box 6416, Chicago, IL 60680-6416: davidgclohessy@gmail.com

SNAP USA: snap.dorris@gmail.com and bdorris@SNAPnetwork.org

Terence McKiernan, Bishop Accountability Organisation: terry@bishop-accountability.org and ann@bishop-accountability.org

Voice of the Faithful, Boston USA: office@votf.org

United States of America Childrens’ Helplines: National Runaway Switchboard– 1-800-621-4000, Childhelp USA – 1800 422 4453, Covenant House – 1800 999 9999

List of International Helplines to assist our Worldwide Readers in Reporting Child Abuse

Europe

Albania Child Helpline- +355 4 2308 20

CISMAI Italian Network of Agencies against Child Abuse: segreteria@cismai.org

Save the Children Italy: info@savethechildrenitaly and info@crin.org

Save the Children –Brussels, Geneva & Addis Ababa advocacy offices: info@savethechildren.be, geneva.info@savethechildren.org and fwandabwa@savechildren.org

CBM Christian Child Protection: contact@cbm.org and press-international@cbm.org

GESPCAN German Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect: library@nationalcac.org

ISPCAN The International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect: ispcan@ispcan.org

Austria Telefonhilfe fur Kinder und Jugendliche – 147

Belgium Kinder- en Jongerentelefoon Vlaanderen VZW – 0800 15 111 ChildFocus – 110, Ecoute Enfants – 103 Bosnia and Herzegovina  Udruzenje roditelja tesko bolesne djece u BiH CLL line – 00387 65 341 298  

Bulgaria National Hotline for Children  – +359 2 981 93 00 

Croatia Hrabri telefon (Brave Phone)– 0800 0800

Cyprus Hotline for missing children – 116 000

Czech Republic The Safety Line – 800 155 555

Denmark BørneTelefonen (Children phone) – 35 55 55 55

Estonia Patient groups – 126., AIDS helpline – 645 5555, NGO Lifeline – CONFIDENCE WHEN LIFE TÜDINUILE – 655 8088 or 1707, “Psychology Crisis intervention” NGO Lifeline (Prof. Psychologists) – 631 4300, YOUNG LINE CHAT – 646 1111, Tallinn Family Centre -6556 088 Finland, Child and Youth Phone – 0800 120400

France, Allo Enfance Maltraitee  – 119

Germany, Kinder- und Jugendtelefon Nummer ggen Kummer e.V.  – 0800 111 0333 Greece, Hamogelo – 1056

Hungary, Kek Vonal – 06 80 505 000

Iceland, RedCross– 1717

Ireland, Child Line – 1800 666 666 Italy, SOS il Telefono Azzurro-19696

Latvia, Child Helpline – 800 9000 or 116111

Lithuania, Childline – 8 800 11111

Luxembourg, 12345 Kanner- Jugendtelefon – 12345

Macedonia, SOS Helpline for Children and Youth – +389 2246 6588

Malta, Supportline – 179 

Netherlands, Landelijk Overleg Kindertelefoon – 0800 0432

Norway, Røde Kors telefonen for barn og ungdom (Red Cross Helpline) – 0800 33 321

Poland, Helpline.org.pl – 800 100 100

Portugal, SOS Criança– 27 793 16 17 / 800 20 26 51

Spain, Fundación ANAR – 900 20 20 10 Sweden, BRIS – 0200 230 230 Switzerland, 147 Telephonhilfe fur Kinder und Jugendliche – 147

Serbia, NAcionalna DEcija Linija- NADEL Srbija – 0800123456

Slovakia Linka detskej istoty: 1116 111, www.ldi.sk (child helpline) Hľadané deti: 116 000 (missing and sexually abused children)

Slovenia, Tom National Telephone Network – 080 1234 Turkey, ALO – 183 Ukraine, The Odessa Samaritans Peer Line – 482 221 744

Asian Continent

Armenia Child Protection Hotline – +3741240150 or 240160

Azerbaijan ETIMAD Sumgayit – 23131

Belarus Smorgon Information Centre on children rights education/SICCRE  – +375 1592 33 129

National helpline for domestic violence victims – 8-801-100-8-801

Brunei Helpline Kebajikan – 141  or+673 238 0664;+673 238 0667;+673 238 0668 

Hong Kong, Against Child Abuse Hotline – +852-27551122

Iran, The Helping voice – +98-21-850 1414 or +98-21-850 1415

Kazakhstan, Child Helpline – 150

Korea, South, Hot Line 1391 / Rescue Line for Children – 1577 or 1391, Youth Hotline – 1388 

Mongolia, Friends 1979 – 1979

Nepal, Child Workers in Nepal – 427 1000 Pakistan, Madadgaar Children and Women Help Line – 111 911 922

Russia, Hotline for Children, Teenagers and Parents (Magadan) – +7 41322 20878, Moscow Childline – +7 095 735 8484, Teenage social-psychological support (Tomsk) – +7 83822 244442

SE Asia & Asia Pacific Region

National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Australia: contact@napcan.org.au., SNAP Australia: snapspaner@gmail.com, Australia Kids Help Line – +61 7 1800 55 1800

New Zealand Safeguarding Organisation: admin@safeguardingchildren.org.nz

New Zealand, The Kids Help Foundation Trust  – 0800 942 8787, Youthline Charitable Trust  – 0800 376 633, Kidsline – 0800 543 754 India, Childline India Foundation -1098

Indonesia, TESA – 129 

Japan Childline Support Center Japan (NPO) – 0120-99-7777

Philippines, Bantay Bata 163 – 163

Philippines Save the Children: Address: Supporter Care team Midland Building, 1040 EDSA, Magallanes Village, Makati City 1232 Call us: Please call (02) 851-3702 or (02) 853-2142, Fax us: Send us a fax on (02) 853-0215

For volunteer and internship:Volunteer.PH@savethechildren.org

Singapore, Tinkle Friend – 1800 2744 788

T’ai-wan, 113 woman and children protection helpline– 113

Thailand, Saidek – 1387

Vietnam, Childline – 1800 1567

Near East and Africa

SASPCAN South African Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect: admin@childlinesa.org.za

ANPPCAN African Network for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (Uganda & Ethiopia) regional@anppcan.org

Enfants Solidaires d’Afrique et du Monde: info@esamsolidarity.org

Botswana, Childline Botswana- 0800 3900 900

Egypt Hotline for Children – 16000

Gambia 199 Helpline – 199

Israel, L.O./Combat violence against women – 09952 8927 Jordan, 110 for Families and Children – 110

Kenya, Chidline- 116

Namibia, Lifeline/Childline Namibia – 926461226894

Nigeria, Human Development Initiatives – 0806 353 1872

Palestine, Sawa Child Protection Helpline – 121 

South Africa, Childline South Africa – 08000 55555 Senegal, Centre GINDDI – 800 88 88

Uganda, 0800 111 222

 Zimbabwe, Childline – 961

Yemen, YMHA – 236622

Caribbean, Central and South America

Antigua & Barbuda Friends Hotline Antigua and Barbuda – 800 4357

Argentina 102 Childhelpline – 102

Brasil TECA – +55 21 2589 5656, 123Alô! – +55 21 2197-1500 

Chile Fono Infancia – 800 200 818

Colombia Telefono Amigo – 106

Costa Rica LÃnea Cuenta Conmigo- +506 800 2244-911 Dominican Republic Linea Telefonica para Auxilio – 538-6151

Jamaica, Friends Hotline – +1-888-991-4505 or 977 5754 Mexico, Acercatel – 01800 110 10 10

Panama, Tu Linea – 147

Paraguay, FONO Ayuda – 559 200 or 147 Peru, Fundación ANAR – +51 0800 22210 Trinidad & Tobago, Childline – 800 4321 ot 131

Uruguay, Linea Azul Servicio Telefónico – 800 50 50

BACK TO THE BAD OLD DAYS

(By Brian Mark Hennessy)

Do you remember the Bad Old Days when Bishops, as a matter course, did their utmost to prevent any hint of clerical impropriety getting into the public domain? It was not that long ago. Back in 2009 the Irish “Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse” concluded that the major “pre-occupation” of the Dublin Archdiocese, when dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse, had been the maintenance of secrecy to avoid scandal and protect the reputation of the Church. In addition, that pre-occupation was characterised also to keep safely in its bank account its vast treasury that had been gleaned from the millions of coins dropped into collection plates by humble folks’ fingers worn to the bone by daily toil and strife. Well clearly that description is a touch of my cavalier freelance status. The Commission did not put it quite like that – but it is the essence of the situation. Of course, those clerics of the Church guarding that treasure box lived like princes compared to their donors – and still do today for the most part.

The Irish saga did not end there, for after the Irish Bishops had re-written their Rules for handling cases of sexual abuse by insisting that every abusive priest was reported to the police, the Vatican Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, the notorious Cardinal Hoyos, opposed the amendments. He regarded reporting child sexual abusers to the police as being nothing short of traitorous tyranny – and he even went to the length of praising bishops publicly for refusing to report crimes of child sexual abuse to the civil authorities. Indeed, yet another Vatican spokesperson, in a Pontius Pilate gesture of “not me guv”, once stated that what happens in Catholic Church Dioceses in the matter of child sexual abuse throughout the world is nothing to do with the Vatican: child sexual abuse was not, in his words “in the competence of the Holy See”.

The Irish Bishops were not the only ones of course. No reader today can be ignorant of the name of the Boston Globe which claimed that between 1992 and 2002, the Archdiocese of Boston settled child sexual abuse claims against seventy priests “secretly” for a similar raft of reasons. Indeed, most famously, perhaps, Pope Benedict XVI himself was accused in April 2010 of covering up abuse cases to avoid scandal when he had been a Bishop in a German diocese. A year later, two German lawyers initiated charges against him at the International Criminal Court for similarly covering up allegations of child sexual abuse when he was the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. The case cited his reasons for doing so as being to maintain secrecy and cover-up in order to protect the reputation of the Catholic Church – and of course, also to protect the clerical perpetrators of those alleged crimes.

Throughout the world, from the furthest diocese to the Vatican State and in every Religious Order of the Catholic Church, it was once a common spoken and often documented policy of the Hierarchies that, at all costs, the priority in sexual abuse allegations was the avoidance of scandal, the protection of criminal clerical abusers of children from civil scrutiny and the safety of Catholic Church funds for what they saw as “plunder” by the child victims. They regarded child abuse as a “sin” that once forgiven in the confessional should have no further implications. The fact that child sexual abuse was a Civil Crime and was an act of heinous moral debasement and cruel physical and psychological “torture” – as the United Nations rightly describes the sexual abuse of children – was of no interest to their dark hearts, minds and souls.

We went from that darkness gradually into an era of increasing light, humility and acceptance by the princely clerics of the Catholic Church (not all I add hastily – but I leave that for another day) that the bad old days were really very, very bad – and should not be repeated in the future. So, by a couple of years ago in the 2000-year-old sordid history of the Catholic Church, we had arrived at a situation that the world was full (well, perhaps only half full) of ‘measured” hope of an enlightened change in the Catholic Hierarchical action in respect to allegations of Child Sexual Abuse. This was given impetus by Pope Benedict XVI, against whom allegations of past collusion in failing to take action against paedophile clerics remained very much unanswered, suddenly resigned. His replacement, Francis, took the bull by the horns, for want of a better expression, and declared that there was no place in the Catholic Church for those clerics who had abused children. Despite the rearguard action by the dogmatic, died in the wool, narcissistic clericalists against Francis’ more enlightened role in the issue, there was, by that point, truly new hope that better was to come. Well, take it from the humble me, this is no time to relax.

Enter upon the scene , stage New York, is Cardinal Timothy Dolan – yes, the very same Cardinal who recently was referee at that New York ‘bun fight” between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. He said, on 6 October 2016, that he had hopes that a new Archdiocesan policy to provide compensation to survivors of clergy sexual abuse will “help bring a measure of peace and healing” to victims. He stated that the new “Voluntary Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program” for those who had been victims of child sexual abuse by priests or deacons of the archdiocese “has made great strides” in addressing abuse. He commented, “we continue to hear from victim-survivors that more needs to be done to reach out to those who have been hurt in the past.” In a News Release, he was quoted as saying that the new program is “another step to respond to the past scourge of sexual abuse of minors by clergy.”

To quote the National Catholic Reporter (NCRonline) the archdiocese said it has already begun reaching out to victim-survivors who have previously notified the archdiocese that they had suffered abuse by a member of its clergy, and they have been asked to participate in the first phase of the program. “Anyone bringing forward a new allegation will be required to follow the policy of the archdiocese to notify the appropriate district attorney’s office, so that they might determine if a crime has been committed. Such allegations will also be investigated by independent professionals and examined by the Archdiocesan Lay Review Board,” the Archdiocesan spokesperson has stated. To cover the cost of compensating victims, the archdiocese said it will take out a long-term loan. “It will not use money given by the people of the archdiocese to support parishes, schools and charitable works,” and none of the funds to be paid to victims will be taken from any money given by a donor “for a specific ministry or apostolate.”

So far so good – but only so far! Anne Barrett Doyle is co-director of BishopAccountability.org – and she is not wholly impressed! As a researcher of the Catholic abuse crisis, Anne sees Cardinal Dolan’s plan differently. Anne says that, “While the fund certainly will help some victims, its biggest beneficiary will be Dolan and his management team. This is a legal strategy in pastoral garb – a tactic by the powerful archbishop to control victims and protect the church’s assets – and its secrets”.

On the face of it, Anne continues, the plan is reasonable. A victim submits a claim form with documentation about rape or molestation by a priest or deacon. If deemed credible, the victim receives an award, which the Archdiocese promises to disburse quickly. But there are two catches. Victims must sign a legal agreement to abide by “all requirements pertaining to privacy and confidentiality,” and they must release the archdiocese from future liability. In other words, they must never sue the Archdiocese about any related matter in the future.

So, what is the real consequence of signing up to Cardinal Dolan’s new enlightened plan? He has a strategy as Anne has said. The Cardinal knows full well that a “Child Victims Act” will be presented to the New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, in 2017 – and Cuomo has promised to give it priority.  If any Victim Survivors take up Cardinal Dolan’s “enlightened” and seemingly “generous” new “Voluntary Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program”, the wily old Cardinal Dolan will have already flushed them out and shackled them into silence. None of those Victims who might have been able to file a suit against Dolan’s Archdiocese under the new “Child Victims’ Act” will be able to proceed with further claims – no matter how rightful they are.

In effect, the victims in Dolan’s program will be signing releases without the benefit of any information about how their perpetrators were managed. They will not be able to sue the Archdiocese in regard to any archdiocesan officials who knew or had suspected that an abusing priest was a risk to children before any subsequent victim suffered abuse? Nor whether the abusing cleric concerned had abused any other victims. Nor what happened to the abusing cleric after the archdiocese learned of his crimes. Nor whether children are protected from him now? Under Cardinal Dolan’s plan, all of this will remain hidden and future actions against the Catholic Archdiocese, saving probably many millions of dollars as well as hefty doses of scandal and reputation -will have been prevented.

Under the gloss of his new and generous plan for Victims of Child Sexual Abuse, this Cardinal Prince Dolan of the Catholic Church has shown that he is steeped in the practices of the “bad old days” of the wholesale protectionism of clerics from civil justice jurisdictions. He knows the truth, most likely, if anyone does, that some of these will be men who have failed in their Christian remit. His strategy assists both himself and them by avoiding the consequences of a litany of erroneous Archdiocesan decisions of the past.

Last, but of course, not least, this wily wolf in sheep’s clothing Cardinal Archbishop, is ensuring that his money stays in the bank – and he will be able to continue to live like a prince and be hailed as a “decent sort of chap” by all the white tie celebrities who recently surrounded both him and the 2016 Presidential hopefuls at the high table.

[Credits are due to the National Catholic Reporter, the Boston Globe – and Anne Barrett Doyle who is co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an independent non-profit based in Waltham, Mass., founded in 2003, to research child abuse by priests and religious and on the management of those cases by bishops, religious orders and the Holy See.]

THE DISADVANTAGE OF PLAYING THE LONG GAME AND THE CRIMINAL AND SHAMEFUL CONDUCT OF THE COMBONI MISSIONARY ORDER OF VERONA, ITALY

(By Brian Mark Hennessy)

It goes without saying, that in matters of “concealment” playing the “long game” requires a strategy. If the latter is missing, it can go horribly wrong. The most fundamental difficulty with such a venture, especially if you are trying to conceal a matter of “guilt” or “complicity” for which there is evidence, is that one day your calumnious version of the “truth” may suffer from a very nasty shock called “exposure”. So the lie that you are trying to conceal, perhaps for as long as eternity, had better look like the “rock solid truth”. Lies will come back to haunt you if they are carelessly wrapped in the need for constant “denial”, impenetrable silence or the fog of obfuscation. Fog, you probably know quite well, has a habit of disappearing as quickly as it descends – and silence can easily be obliterated by a torrent of chatter. A well-planned strategy in the game of concealment may work for a while, but it might also unravel much faster than you could ever have envisaged possible. That is because in “time”, even a very long time, not you, but your successors, who know of the “calumnies” that once hid your denials of the “truth”, may not consider that it serves “their long game” to preserve “your long game” any longer. There is also that outside chance that an unexpected and unforeseen occurrence may devastate the walls and foundations of your well-structured, seemingly “impregnable” strategy. Concealment can be a very wearisome, protracted and messy game of uncertain and often complex, entangled outcomes. That is why initial, humble admissions of the truth are always the safer course as they ensure a speedy, albeit sometimes grubby, termination of the issues. Yet, this most simple and obvious of facts remains routinely ignored.

Forgive the long convoluted preamble, but most readers will have experienced that there are many examples of concealment in the history of great institutions that, in the course of time, the new faces on the block have sought either to downplay or to admit. Their tendency is to “bare their breasts” of an institution’s past sordid events when most of the original players in the transgressions and the subsequent, inevitable “cover up”, have disappeared into anonymity by being deceased or replaced. The trick for the new “honest” regime is to be able to “wash their hands” of the events by saying “Well, look, chaps, I am being honest about the facts, but I wasn’t around at the time. It was that inexcusably rotten lot of misguided liars before me who dunnit!” This strategy usually works quite well because at the moment that the stark, but unsurprising, truth is divulged, nobody will be around to carry the can. Most importantly (and the major benefit of a successful long game) is that nobody is around to claim damages from them either. It is assumed at that moment that everyone wins because the truth is “out” and some sort of fabricated apology has been made. In fact, it is only the institution itself that wins because they earn reputational points for being good guys! Everyone else is dead. Well, that is the theory, but does it always work well in practice?

Not always – because there is such a notion as the long term “reputation” of the institution to be considered! Moreover, any institution that repeatedly finds itself in the situation that it has to humble itself and apologise for its grievous and often hideous past crimes begins to look distinctly like an infamous den of atrocious sadism and chronic corruption. A brief look at a few examples from the recent annals of the Catholic Church can well illustrate incidents when the common-place long term Catholic strategies of denial were eventually exposed, or perhaps put more aptly, were “extracted” from them with all the pain of a dentist’s wrench. I do not have to go into much detail to illustrate the point. We all now know of the horrors of the Magdalene Nuns’ factory workshops that incarcerated women in regimes of forced labour in Ireland. We have heard in just recent years of the notorious complicity of Catholic priests and Nuns in Spain in the trade of selling off new born babies, reported to their mothers as “still born”, in order that those babes could be brought up as young Fascists of the Franco Regime. The abuse, by forced castration, of young choir boys to provide for the once fashionable castrati in the Catholic Church, even early in the last century, is another case of attempted cover up of an obscene and cruel practice. Indeed, I am a witness to this practice because one of my school fellows at St John’s Cathedral in Portsmouth was an acknowledged castrato at a time well beyond all the voices of the rest of us had raucously broken – and a century after the Vatican asserted that the practice of castration to produce castrati had ceased in the 19^th Century. Nevertheless, despite denials, the Catholic Church forced castration of boys did not end there. A more sinister case of castration was ordered by Church authorities of the young sixteen-year-old Amsterdam boy named Henk Heithuis (1935-1958) who was in care at a Catholic Order’s school for boys. There Henk was abused by a priest – and when he complained, he was labelled as a homosexual and accused of seducing the priest. He was sent, subsequently, to a Catholic psychiatric unit and there he was brutally castrated as a treatment for his “perceived” homosexuality – and then discharged whilst still suffering from the resultant very serious psychiatric and medical conditions.  Thus, despite what appear to be the Vatican’s current efforts to reform, at the very mention of the “Catholic Church”, the words “cruelty, chronic and endemic corruption” effortlessly rush to the forebrain’s of a goodly proportion of the World’s population. The restoration of “reputation” is the very longest game of all the “long games” – and whilst the Catholic Church continues to add shame upon shame, they will permanently remain a geological eon away from achieving it.

The list of abject cruelty is truly interminable, but to it, we must add the rampant, sordid, historical and omni-present crime of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a history of grim proportions and multitudes of victims, both living and dead, who have never had justice and never been able to bear witness to their personal tragedies. Instead, those victims have borne the brunt of downright lies, denials, obfuscation and silence by both those who abused them and those who covered up the abuse in order to save their own arrogant, narcissistic clerical institutions from widespread condemnation. We must not forget to mention, of course, that it is also in order to save themselves from litigation for compensation. What the institutions of the Catholic Church have not even started to achieve is the salvation of their reputation, but even that, in time they believe, will mend and by then they hope that the strategy for the “long game” will have reached its planned conclusion.

So it is, that even today, such victims whose lives have expired by age and illness and stress and suicide, continue to pass on to another world of perpetual silence. They can speak no more. That is also a much anticipated outcome of the “long game” strategy of the eternal Catholic Church. They know that every Victim is a temporary phenomenon and their accusers will, in time, accuse no more. They also believe that the names of the cruel, abusing clerics will likewise fade into history and be of no further concern nor embarrassment to them. They think, happily, that all will be done and dusted and put to eternal rest by “Old Father Time”. Yet, there are unforeseen exceptions to this general rule. Notably, one such exception is the case of the sexual abuse of child seminarians by Comboni Missionaries at their Mirfield seminary. The latter institution’s vain and forlorn hopes of future anonymity for all concerned will, most surprisingly for the Combonis perhaps, not come to pass. Why is that?

Well, I did warn above of the possibility of an unforeseen intrusion in the strategy of the Order’s “long game” that might just shake their walls sufficiently to set them tumbling down. In fact, it has already happened to a significant degree, but the Comboni Missionary Order of Verona, Italy, have probably not heard of any rumblings just yet. The rupture of the Combonis’ long term strategy has been a silent event which, contrary to all their anticipations, will have an increasing impact as time passes. The cause of the rupture is that someone, not even directly involved in the events that the Combonis have sought to conceal “ad infinitum”, has devised their own “long game’ with an indestructible strategy – and it is called the “Government Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in the United Kingdom”. We all know, of course, that this Inquiry, which has been constituted, fundamentally, to learn lessons for the future safety and care of children, has had a rocky start. Some even dare to hope that it will never get back fully on to the rails. I doubt that that hope will ever come to pass. Yet, apart from the slow-starting Inquiry itself, the UK Government has already established another totally separate “long game” – and that is called the “Truth Project”.

The strategy here is that Victims and Survivors of and Witnesses to Child Sexual Abuse are able to commit to perpetuity the events that they have suffered at the hands of named Child Sex Abusers and Institutions. The current estimate of those who have made testimonials to the Truth Project is vast. Some 30,000 statements are projected in the medium term and it is envisaged that this may rise to 300,000 ultimately by 2020. These testaments relate to events which have been covered up, glossed over, disguised, concealed and hidden by Institutions. Amongst those Institutions of the Catholic Church that were obliged, but failed to protect and care for victims when they were children, is the Comboni Missionary Order’s Seminary at Mirfield, Yorkshire, England. I and many other ex-seminarians of that establishment at Mirfield have already submitted witness statements to this Truth Project. By doing so, the “long game” of the Comboni Missionary Order’s silence and obfuscation has been monumentally eclipsed by the “much longer game” of the very Victims of their abuse and cover up.

When I die, presumably at some time in the next decade or so, my Witness Statement will still be there in the annals of the Inquiry for all to see. Whilst I may not see justice in my life time and nor even the meanest admission of sorrow for the abuse that I suffered from the Catholic Order of Comboni Missionaries, my witness statement will not fade even when Ilkley Moor’s worms will have “come to eat me up”. So too, I note with insightful emphasis, that what will gather unexpected longevity in the Truth Project’s findings, will be the names of those accused of the crimes committed against myself and my young companions. In addition, those priests of the Order who were aware of the abuse at the time that it was committed and those in the decades since (such as a string of Superior Generals of the Order) who have continued to stay silent and to conceal or deny the truth, will discover that their names have also been permanently and justifiedly “incarcerated” within the inky bars of the bold type of the documents of the Truth Project. Their “long game” strategy of contrived obfuscation, lies, silence and the betrayal of the childhood innocence of myself and other boys at the Mirfield seminary has been a profound miscalculation. Neither their betrayal of the young boys in their care and nor their names will ever be forgotten.

As for the future, well, for my part, at this late stage in my life, I no longer wish for, nor need, any vacuous, insipid statements of apology from clerical lips that have been fouled by decades of constant prevarication. I see the Truth Project now as a monument to my “empowerment” and the only monument I seek. Yet, by default, it is also a permanent monument to the criminal and shameful conduct of the Comboni Missionary Order of Verona, Italy.

Religious Privilege Undermines Abuse Victims’ Access to Justice

By Richard Scorer

(Richard Scorer is a specialist child abuse lawyer at Slater & Gordon. In this article, published in the National Secular Society in August 2016, he draws attention to organisations seeking more lenient treatment over child abuse-connected matters because they are religious and makes the case for no concessions being given).

Which is more important: religious freedom, or safeguarding children from abuse?

Should churches and religious organisations be exempt from secular standards of child protection? Two recent court cases involving the Jehovah’s Witnesses raise this issue in its starkest form.

Some background. Over the past two decades a significant number of abuse cases have emerged in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Clients of mine who allege they have been abused within the organisation describe a culture which is profoundly collusive with child abuse. It’s hard enough for abused children to speak out in any setting; in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’s bordering on the impossible. The organisation is notorious for its “two witness” rule: anyone who accuses an adult of abuse must have a corroborating witness. Since the vast majority of child abuse occurs in secret, the effect of this rule is to silence abuse victims. Moreover, if there is no corroborating witness, the complainant is often treated as having made a false accusation. This leads to the complainant being “disfellowshipped”, or ostracised by other Witnesses. A terrifying prospect if, like most children growing up in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, your entire family life revolves around them. In this way, victims say, the culture of the Jehovah’s Witnesses facilitates and protects abusers.

The two legal cases have opened a window into this culture. The cases involve the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the legal entity through which the Jehovah’s Witnesses operate. One case concerns the Watch Tower Society’s liability to pay damages to a proven victim of abuse. The Society sought to argue that its devolved structure means that it cannot be ‘vicariously liable’ for the actions of its officials who abuse children. The Watch Tower Society’s defence failed at first instance in 2015, and its attempt to take the case to the Court of Appeal was dismissed last month.

This is a variation of the argument advanced by the Catholic Church, which maintained for many years that priests were not employees and therefore the Church could not be liable for their actions. The Catholic Church’s long running battle to evade responsibility on that basis ended in failure in 2012.

Meanwhile, in 2014, in response to emerging allegations of child abuse, the Charity Commission instigated a statutory inquiry into the Watch Tower Society’s approach to safeguarding. Quite reasonably, the Commission wants to understand whether the Society’s trustees have fulfilled their safeguarding responsibilities under charity law. Also, the Commission sought production of relevant documents. Rather than cooperate with the inquiry (as one would expect of an organisation with nothing to hide), the Society applied for a judicial review at the High Court to try to abort the inquiry and resist the production order. The Society argued (amongst other things) that the Charity Commission was “interfering with (the Society’s) rights of freedom of religion under article 9 of the Human Rights Act… by commencing an inquiry with a view to changing Jehovah’s Witnesses’ religious practices“.

In other words, if the purpose of the Charity Commission inquiry was to ensure that the Society is complying with secular safeguarding norms, this violates religious freedom.

In March this year the Watch Tower Society lost its application for judicial review. But as often seems to happen in English law when an issue of serious social importance falls to be decided, the matter became bogged down in an obscure technical argument; on this occasion, about whether the Society had pursued the correct legal avenue in seeking to challenge the Commission’s decision. The Court of Appeal decided that it hadn’t. The Society’s subsequent attempt to pursue the matter to the Supreme Court also failed. The underlying question- which comes first, religious freedom or the protection of children from abuse- will have to wait for another day.

Following the Court of Appeal decision, the Charity Commission urged that the Watch Tower Society “engage constructively” with the inquiry. Anyone affected by safeguarding issues in the Jehovah’s Witnesses should contact the Commission’s lead investigator; a number of my clients are providing input to the inquiry. But the Society simply said that it was “looking at the ruling carefully and evaluating where we can go next”. So we can probably expect more attempts to stall the inquiry and resist proper scrutiny. But at least these court cases have had a beneficial side effect: they are raising public awareness both of the issue of child abuse in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the wider issue of religious organisations and churches pleading a religious justification for evading basic norms of child safeguarding.

The Catholic Church in Australia for example, (but not Britain) has successfully evaded being sued for clerical abuse for decades on the ridiculous premise that it is not a legal entity – which has not stood in the way of it operating bank accounts or receiving legacies.

In Australia, hearings in the Royal Commission on child sexual abuse exposed the Witnesses’ culpability in protecting abusers in a devastating fashion; the Royal Commission heard that their safeguarding procedures were “woefully deficient”.

Here (in the UK), the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, now chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, needs to link with the Charity Commission inquiry and undertake a thorough investigation into culture and practices within the organisation.

If the Jehovah’s Witnesses imagine that they can escape scrutiny of their safeguarding failures, I am certain they will be proved wrong. The courts have certainly given them short shrift. But in exposing what has happened, we need to nail the central issue once and for all: child protection is more important than religious expression.

Religious organisations need to obey the law of the land, just like everyone else. When it comes to child abuse, religious exceptionalism needs to stop.

(Note: Paragraphs in bold type were selected from the original text by Brian Mark Hennessy and do not appear in bold type in the original article).

(Brian Hennessy further comments that: Readers of the Mirfield Memories Blog (Comboni Missionaries – A Childhood in their Hands) may wish to ask why is it that the Charities Commission rejected, almost without comment, two complaints made to them by Brian Hennessy and Kevin Scullin in regard to the Comboni Missionary Order’s non-compliance with its stated Charity Commission Account mission, its misuse of Mission Funds in the settlement of legal cases, (and in respect to this article) – why the Order totally rejects all safeguarding procedures of the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom – to which they are bound! Was it merely because the Charities Commission was reluctant to become involved because they wanted to avoid a charge from the Comboni Missionary Order that they were “interfering with rights of “freedom of religion” under article 9 of the Human Rights Act ?” If that is the case – then they have opted also not to fulfill two of their primary obligations which are to ensure that funds accrued for charity are not being misused and their donors have not been misled!).

CARDINAL PELL

To lie, or not to Lie? That is the question.

From the outset, let me say that Cardinal Pell is, in this Earthly Realm, innocent until proved guilty – like every other man. Yet, he has – again – been accused of inappropriate sexual advances to boys during the 1980’s. The accusations are under investigation by police of the State of Victoria in Australia – in which country he was priest, bishop, archbishop and then Cardinal of the Catholic Church. It is not the first time he has been accused for he was previously accused – and cleared – of the allegation that he abused a 12-year old boy at a camp in the 1960s. The new matters for investigation are separate incidents of touching boys inappropriately and stripping naked in a locker room in front of three boys in the 1980s. Cardinal Pell has denied the charges, which were broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Company after the allegations were leaked. Cardinal Pell remains a specific object of press interest, however, not only for his Curial governorship of the Vatican’s wealth in its worldwide dimensions, but also for his contributions to a recent Royal Commission Inquiry into child Abuse in the Australian Catholic Church in which he appeared to admit, somewhat sullenly, that he did not take some reports of child abuse very seriously at the time they were reported to him.

I don’t know, of course, when Cardinal Pell is telling the truth or a lie. Only he knows – and presumably, his God, in the Heavenly Realm, knows too. One thing I do know – from personal experience – is that “Truth” is not the prerogative of priests, bishops and Cardinals just because they wander around in swirling robes, mitres and white collars – and cry from Sunday pulpits to proclaim the Truth of Jesus Christ, their Redeemer. I know this because priests do lie – and they have lied about matters I know to be true. I know those matters, related to the clerical sexual abuse of a minor, are true – because they happened to me. In the category of clerical lies – I include any attempt to suggest that the truth – which was told to them and which they have previously admitted to knowing – may now not be discerned because of the lapse of time between the present and the historic event which they seek now to enshroud with doubt.

Of course, if Cardinal Pell is lying, he is also taking a gamble. There are a few tosses of the dice he must consider. A double six – that God does not exist anyway – would be the best option because that would mean that the Redemption thing and Heaven and Hell are of no consequence. Any other score – and there are many permutations – pose a problem – such as will he be able to get to a Confessional Box in time before a thunder bolt strikes him down? I used to worry about this myself when I was still a child – because even touching myself “inappropriately” in the days of my youthful exploration of my own bodily capabilities – caused panic. That terrifying spiritual, physical and mental state of agitation was induced by priests of the Passionist Order who routinely threatened me with the Fires of Hell and Everlasting Damnation. A “Believer” – as I presume Cardinal Pell to be – has much, therefore, to worry about.

          Do the Comboni Missionary Order subscribe to “Cheap Grace”         

Yet even if Cardinal Pell is lying and makes it to a Confessional box in time, not all the problems disappear. He has to consider whether the theological theories of “cheap grace” and “hyper-grace” that once echoed against the walls of Catholic Cloisters and Sacristies in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries were true or not. Many clerics did believe in these “unorthodox” theories even into the middle of the last century and beyond – and so I need to explain what was expounded about them.

“Cheap Grace” was a proposition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that emphasized the benefits of Christianity without any of the costs. For example, if one believed in the Redemptive power of Baptism or of the Crucifixion or both combined, which absolved all sins and saved all mankind for eternity from everlasting Hell fires – then Christianity has no personal cost to a “sinner” – because they have already been saved. Hence the word “cheap” – because there was no subsequent loss – in terms of the cost of a ticket to Heaven – attached to sins committed. “Hyper Grace” was a bit different. The term “hyper-grace” is a similar theory, but it emphasizes the grace of God to the exclusion of other teachings and maintains that all sin, past, present, and future, has already been forgiven, so there is no need for a believer to ever confess a sin and nor to submit to penance.

Yet there is another matter – which is more “thorny” – that Cardinal Pell must consider. Enter the Apostles. Paul preached in (Acts 20:27): the “whole counsel of God” – which meant that all teachings must be understood as one message and you cannot select the bits of it that you like. Thus he stated that it was true that Christians have been forgiven by God, but that does not imply that we never have to confess and demonstrate sorrow for our sins. Indeed, even in pre-Christian times (Psalm 51:4) it was suggested that if we are to confess our sins to each other in demonstration of remorse and re-commitment, then why should we not need to confess them to God, because every sin is against God. The final words on this subject really come back to the central difficulty for Cardinal Pell – which is his ultimate decision as to whether to lie or not lie about the allegations. The very last words, perhaps, rest with Saints Jude – and again Paul. The former implies that to rely on the facts of the Redemption without personal responsibility: “perverts God’s grace into a license for immorality” (Jude 1:4) – and St Paul maintains that the act of repentance is conditional only on a sincere resolve never to commit the same sin again.

My regular readers will know that all of the above is a preamble to something about the Comboni Missionary Order of Verona, Italy. This occasion is no exception and so I now allay any increasing disappointment in the direction of my progress. The subject, moreover, is also the same as usual: clerical child sexual abuse, clerical indifference and clerical lies. The matter in discussion today, however, is “confession” – and what was understood by clerics of the Comboni Missionary Order of Verona, Italy, as being the purpose of confession. What were they taught as young seminarians and as novices and scholastics already under religious vows and preparing for the priesthood within that Order? By whom were they taught? I cannot answer these specific questions, but there is one incident that gives rise to the doubt that they were much aware of the “final words” on the matter of confession and penance that I have attributed to Saints Jude and Paul above.

The Confession That Said It All

My doubts about a lack of understanding within the Order of the “orthodox” Catholic theology of confession relates only to one incident known to me. That is a limitation I have to accept – as does the reader. That event happened in the late 1960s when Father Luciano Fulvi, – who was based at the St Peter Claver College Seminary in Mirfield, Yorkshire, England and which was run by the Comboni Missionary Order of Verona, Italy – heard one of a number of reports from different seminarians that he had been sexually abused by a priest of that same Order and House. The response from Father Fulvi was not that the boy should give him permission to make sure that the Rector heard about the allegation straight away which the boy, using the meeting as a cry for help, had probably anticipated. Neither did Father Fulvi advise that the boy must have the courage to report the matter himself to the Rector so that it could be dealt with appropriately and the boy could get professional assistance. Father Fulvi did not say that it was a crime that had been committed against the boy and that the matter should be reported – not only to the Police because it was against Civil Law, but also to the Vatican Curia as even Canon Law demanded. These can be deemed to be serious failures on the part of Father Fulvi. Those failures were perhaps an attempt to protect the accused brother priest from action against him, but most likely, they were the result of a dearth of appropriate training by the Order, or knowledge of the instructions in the Code of Conduct ratified by the Order. Alternatively, these failures may have been the result of perceptions of the priest himself as influenced by the “cheap grace” and “hyper grace” theories. I have to admit that I do not know which, but the evidence allows me to speculate.

The latter “cheap grace” and “hyper grace” theories are certainly possible – for Father Fulvi’s response was merely akin to: “You must always remember that Father Pinkman has at his disposal an act of Confession to another priest”. This can be interpreted in a number of ways. For example: “It does not matter that much if Father Pinkman has sexually abused you because he will be forgiven – so just go away and forget about it – and take that into account if he abuses you again”. That is a bit of a stark explanation some might think – as they jump to the defence of Father Fulvi. Yet – are not Father Fulvi’s words proposing the very same as those that St Jude decried in his statement to the effect that redemption without personal responsibility “perverts the grace of our God into a license for immorality”. Were those words not implying the opposite to St Paul’s words that “repentance is conditional on a true and strong resolve never to commit the same sin again”.

Moreover, not for the first time, let me recapture here what was the general response of all the clergy of the Comboni Missionary Order at St Peter Claver College, the Mirfield seminary – when sexual abuse was reported to them. Those facts are: that 18 boys alleged that priests of the Comboni Missionary Order abused them at the St Peter Claver College Mirfield Seminary. Also, that some 1000 acts of sexual abuse were perpetrated against them – each act of abuse a crime in its own right. In addition, that 23 reports were made by seminarians themselves at the time of the abuse and 3 reports of the abuse were made by parents of seminarians. Furthermore, that those Victims of clerical sexual abuse have stated that 50 witnesses have provided statements in support of their allegations and 5 statements were made to the West Yorkshire Police – who subsequently determined that crimes had taken place. Finally, that a number of requests for extradition to the United Kingdom of one surviving priest against whom allegations have been made – have been refused. The Order at the St Peter Claver College Mirfield, held no inquiries to which any of the complainants attended. No reports were made to the Civil Police or Welfare authorities. No reports were made to the Vatican Curia. For years, no action at all was taken against the priests who continued to abuse more seminarians without relent.

The alarming fact is that the inaction of Father Luciano Fulvi mirrored that of every other member of the Comboni Missionary Order at the St Peter Claver College Mirfield Seminary to whom disclosures of abuse were made – and so I am making no comment about him that did not apply in general to his confreres. The Comboni Missionary Order have yet to explain how an Order, said to be founded to spread the Mission of Jesus Christ throughout the world, through the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles – could have failed so horrendously those very children that were in their care. Not only that. They need to explain also why they still seek to cast doubt upon the allegations, rather than submit to the “Truth” of events about which they have always known full well – and have admitted in the past, but now continue to deny at every opportunity.

Ultimately, the Comboni Missionary Order has the same choices as Cardinal Pell: to lie or not to lie! If they truly believe in an all-embracing way what they profess, they can either continue to lie and to make an unseemly rush to the confessional every time they open their mouths – or they can submit to the less than likely theories of “cheap grace” and “hyper grace”. It appears to me that they may have adopted the latter long ago as their survival strategy. So be it – but they need to be aware that those theories are just “theories” – and they might just be caught out individually on their day of Judgement!

As for Father Luciano Fulvi, there is no attempt here to undermine his personal mission to do good to fellow men. He was, perhaps, the most well liked of all the priests that spent time at the St Peter Claver College Mirfield Seminary in Yorkshire, England. I have a photograph of him – as he was laughing amongst a group of boys – myself included – covered in coal dust, after we had all emerged from the deepest and furthest tunnel of a Yorkshire coal mine. Yet – Father Fulvi was, at the very least, a product of a cruel system that was imbued, not only with moments of grace, but with a potential for evil. That “evil” was exhibited in abundance at the St Pater Claver College Mirfield Seminary in the 1960s and 1970s – and it has resurfaced in some of its members – principally in its Superiors – in each decade since – and it is still there amongst them in the present today.

No individual in the Order has some form of corporate insurance cover against the Day of their personal Judgement. The ultimate choice – to lie or not to lie – is theirs individually – and theirs alone in the face of their Eternal Judge. Moreover, their silence is no protection either. Silence can be as much a denial of truth as is a spoken lie. As for Cardinal Pell – he is a mere mortal – as are we all – and despite having the rare honour of owning a scarlet-tassled cap – he has the same choices as do we all in moments of personal crisis: to lie or not to lie – to be silent or to speak the truth. This is the question that, from time to time, we all have to answer – and then live with the consequences. The difference for an individual between the truth and the lie is the subsequent knowledge of personal “Honour” or the misery of perpetual human “Degradation”. The dignity of our self-perception will forever thus depend on the way we respond.

(Written by: Brian Mark Hennessy – with apologies to Mr William Shakespeare – to whom I have to admit that “to be or not to be” has so much more of a “philosophical” ring about it!