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Irish
Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore leaves after a ceremony in
the Hall of
Remembrance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in
Jerusalem January 29, 2012.
(Credit: Reuters/Baz Ratner)
|
(Reuters) -
Ireland's deputy prime minister said on Thursday he thought the head of the
Irish Catholic Church should resign after a TV documentary reported the cleric
had failed to warn parents their children were being sexually abused by a
priest in 1975.
A BBC
documentary broadcast on Tuesday said that Cardinal Sean Brady was given the
names and addresses of children being abused by notorious pedophile Brendan
Smyth during a Church investigation but had failed to act to ensure their safety.
"It is
my own personal view that anybody who did not deal with the scale of the abuse
that we have seen in this case should not hold a position of authority,"
Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore told parliament, when asked about Brady's
response to the BBC program.
Gilmore
described the revelations as "another horrific episode of failure by
senior members of the Catholic Church to protect children", adding his
voice to calls by groups representing victims of abuse for Brady to stand down.
Two of the
victims whose identities were made known to Brady at the time were subjected to
abuse long after the Church inquiry was completed and Smyth continued to abuse
other young victims for more than 15 years afterwards.
The sister
and four cousins of one of the victims were also abused for several years after
the investigation.
However,
Brady said the documentary was seriously misleading, saying it had exaggerated
his role in the inquiry and that he did not see it as a resigning matter.
In a
statement, he said he was only a note-taker in the investigation and not the
"designated person" responsible for reporting the matter to the civil
authorities.
He had
trusted his superiors to deal with the matter, he added, saying the Church did
not fully understand the impact of the abuse at the time.
HISTORY OF
SCANDALS
Brady last
year agreed to a legal settlement over his role in administering an oath of
secrecy to one of the teenage victims during the 1975 investigation.
A claim the
boy's father had been allowed to attend an interview at the time was untrue,
the BBC documentary said. None of the parents' of other abuse victims named by
the boy had been warned either, it said.
The Church
in predominantly Catholic Ireland has been rocked by a series of reports of
child sex abuse stretching back decades and of church leaders' complicity in
covering them up.
Ireland
announced last year it would close its embassy to the Vatican, one of the
Catholic country's oldest missions, after relations hit an all-time low over
the Church's handling of sex abuse cases.
Hundreds of
cases of priests sexually and physically abusing youths have come to light in
Europe and the United States in recent decades as new disclosures have
encouraged long-silent victims to go public with their complaints.
One of
Ireland's most notorious pedophiles, Smyth died in 1997, just one month into a
12-year sentence after pleading guilty to 74 charges of indecent and sexual
abuse of boys and girls for more than 30 years.
Sam Adair,
one of Smyth's victims who was interviewed by Brady in 1975, called on the
Cardinal to resign.
"He
did not keep these children from this devil in a dog's collar," he said in
an interview with state broadcaster RTE.
(Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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