The Diocese of Cloyne, which was heavily criticised in 2011 by a government report into its handling of abuse, has made progress in developing child protection policies according to the Irish Church’s safeguarding body.
But the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSCCCI) was highly critical of the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) which it said had failed to focus on child protection for the last 20 years.
In all the NBSCCCI reviewed safeguarding in four dioceses and five religious congregations as part of its programme of audits of the Church in Ireland. In Cloyne it found that the diocese fully met 41 of 48 safeguarding standards and partially met the other seven. However, it recommended the introduction of a policy for whistleblowers concerned about possible abuse.
With regard to the SVD, the safeguarding watchdog pointed out that no child safeguarding case management files existed before 2013 and that this was of “great concern”.
“A lot of documentation was either never generated, or was removed or destroyed by parties unknown, or was kept in some file or files, the existence of which has not yet been discovered,” said the NBSCCCI. The review stated that eight allegations of abuse have been made against six Divine Word missionaries since 1975.
The SVD Provincial, Fr Patrick Byrne “apologised unreservedly” to all those who had been abused and said that allegations received had been passed on to the relevant secular authorities.
The NBSCCCI praised the Archdiocese of Dublin for the “rational, comprehensive and integrated child safeguarding system” it had developed.
The Dioceses of Meath and Killaloe were also said to have made good progress.
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