Survivors condemn bishops’ plan to tackle abuse

Scotland's bishops have been accused of monumentally failing to reach out to the victims of abuse.

In Care Abuse Survivors (INCAS) said in an open letter this week that the Scottish Bishops’ Conference was complicit in abuse because it failed to acknowledge and address clear evidence of wrongdoing.
In the letter, a reflection on the bishops’ response to the findings of the McLellan Commission, INCAS dismissed the apology to victims issued by Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow last August, saying that it failed to acknowledge the role the bishops themselves played in the Church’s failings, leaving lower clergy to shoulder individual responsibility case by case.

The letter says that it would have given “some reassurance to survivors if the bishops had been able to acknowledge their own failings”.

The bishops’ implementation plan, based on the Commission’s recommendations, is also criticised because survivors were not involved in its creation. INCAS criticises the bishops for allowing the plan to be drawn up by the same people criticised for letting down survivors, thereby perpetuating a cycle of potential cover-ups.

It is also suggested that the bishops’ efforts to reach out to survivors and involve them in redress is ill-defined and inconsistent.

Victims are calling for an independent survey of all allegations of abuse from 1947 to 2012, but the in-house report is being prepared, according to the INCAS letter, by many of the same clergy who may have questions to answer.

The letter, signed by parliamentary liaison officer Alan Draper, calls for full and immediate disclosure and for interim compensation to be made to victims who are elderly or unwell. It demands that each diocese be required to set up a formal mechanism for dealing with allegations, with a review board to oversee all related matters.

The letter concludes that only an open and properly audited approach “will help restore the Catholic Church’s public credibility” and give survivors confidence that the Church is prepared to ensure that all survivors will achieve justice, that damage will be repaired and that those guilty of abuse will be held to account.