VICTIMS' RESPONSE:AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL has called on the PSNI to investigate whether there was a cover-up of criminal acts of child abuse in Northern Ireland in light of the BBC's This Week documentary.
Amnesty has asked the PSNI “to investigate whether church officials and others failed to report the alleged criminal offences against children in Northern Ireland to the relevant authorities in Northern Ireland”.
Failure to report a crime is an offence under section 5 of the Criminal Law (Northern Ireland) Act 1967.
No such legislation existed in the Republic in 1975, when the church abuse inquiries dealt with in the programme took place.
Dublin abuse victim Marie Collins said last night that Cardinal Seán Brady “has to go. It’s beyond time. Enough is enough.”
She noted that in his statement yesterday he accepted he had been “part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society and the church”.
Former bishop of Kildare and Leighlin Jim Moriarty “resigned on that very same basis”, she added.
She also expressed “despair” at comments by Msgr Charles Scicluna on RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland programme yesterday in support of Cardinal Brady. She had met Msgr Scicluna at a conference on healing at the Gregorian University in Rome last February and felt “great hope” because of his attitude to the abuse issue. She had also been impressed by his contribution to the BBC programme, but yesterday she was “devastated, despairing” when she heard him on radio.
Abuse victim Andrew Madden felt Cardinal Brady should have resigned “two years ago” when the 1975 abuse inquiries became public.
“It’s impossible to have confidence in the Catholic Church on child abuse when its leadership is littered with bishops who have concealed the sexual abuse of children in the past,” he said.
Maeve Lewis, executive director of the One in Four group, said “this documentary casts a shadow on the credibility of Cardinal Brady . . . Although the times were very different then, it is unimaginable that any adult had such knowledge and failed to act.”
It would be “heartbreaking for survivors to realise that their suffering could have been avoided if only action had been taken”, she said.
Christine Buckley and Carmel McDonnell-Byrne of the Aislinn Centre in Dublin urged Cardinal Brady “to go now before he inflicts further pain on victims abused by Brendan Smyth whom he failed to protect”.
John Kelly of Soca Ireland also called on the cardinal to resign his position as Catholic primate of Ireland, adding that “a joint investigation into these matters by the authorities on both sides of the Border should be established without delay”.
