McLellan report prompts abuse apology

The Catholic Church in Scotland has offered a profound apology to victims of abuse after a review of safeguarding procedures condemned its culture of cover-up. The McLellan Commission’s report, published this week, called for the Church to make victims its priority and to apologise for the hurt caused by clerical abuse.

Responding to the report, which has been likened to the Nolan Review of child protection in the Church in England and Wales in 2001, Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow, president of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, said that child abuse is a horrific crime. He told congregants at St Andrew’s Cathedral on Tuesday: “That this abuse should have been carried out within the Church, by priests and Religious, takes that abuse to another level. Such actions are inexcusable and intolerable.”

The 99-page McLellan report said that support for victims had not been the Church’s priority in the past and that in seeking to avoid scandal it caused “scandal in a theological sense” to victims and to the wider Catholic population. It also criticised the “com­plications of church administration” that hampered efforts to deal consistently with abuse allegations, in particular the different authority structures that separated the bishops and Religious congregations. The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland should have clear authority to lay down policies and procedures around abuse, it went on.

“Tomorrow is too slow” for the implementation of some of the commission’s recommendations, its chairman, Dr Andrew McLellan, a former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, told The Tablet. He said that the Bishops’ Conference, younger and more responsive than a decade ago, was unanimous in its desire for change.

The commission has set out a plan for a comprehensive overhaul of safeguarding, emphasising consistency, training, external scrutiny and the creation of a clear theology of safeguarding. The report also called for the rewriting of the current policy and practice manual, “Awareness and Safety”.

Alan Draper, a prominent safeguarding campaigner and former child protection consultant for the Church in Scotland, warned the Church that “it is actions that matter, not pious words”. Scottish bishops must repair damage that may have been done to victims as a result of abuse, he said. He pointed out that the commission had a limited remit and was unable to review files and actual practice. While welcoming the McLellan recommendations, Mr Draper claimed that they also constituted “an indictment of the appalling behaviour of the hierarchy”.

Set up in November 2014, the McLellan Commission spoke to victims of abuse as well as safeguarding professionals, in the context of a wave of accusations against the Church highlighted by the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who was obliged to resign following allegations of sexual misconduct with adult seminarians.