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!).