The public still doesn't know that the Church has put in place a robust child protection system, writes David Quinn. It needs to appoint someone whose sole task is to tell them this.
Are the victims always right? It is a relevant question. By it, I don't mean were they or weren't they abused. It is abundantly clear that they were.
No, what I mean by the question is this; is their analysis of the scandals, what caused them, and what the Church must do to make redress, always right? To judge from how the media covers the scandals the answer is 'yes', the victims are, indeed, always right.
But if victims - of whatever type of crime - are always right, then we would have no need of a court system, other than to ascertain whether a crime against a victim had indeed been committed or not.
After guilt had been ascertained, the victim would then be asked what the sentence should be, and we can expect that in nine cases out of ten, the sentence delivered would be the maximum possible.
But everyone knows that victim's justice is not real justice because if it was, then we really would hand over the entire justice system to victims.
The reason we don't is that victims often lack objectivity about their own affairs. They are understandably deeply angry and this can't but affect their view of a given situation.
Turning to the clerical sex abuse scandals, the constant message of both the victims, and therefore of the media also, is that the Church has done nothing and learnt nothing since the scandals first came to light in the early 1990s.
Resigned
But that simply isn't true. It has done a lot. For example, dating back to Bishop Brendan Comiskey, three bishops have resigned (if you include Bishop of Cloyne, John Magee) and three others have offered their resignation - resignations that have yet to be accepted.
Hundreds of millions of euro in both cash and property have been paid out to date, both by the bishops and by the religious orders. If pay-outs in Ireland were as big as in the United States, several dioceses would probably be bankrupt by now. That could still happen here and don't be surprised if it does.
In addition, a robust child protection system is now in place. In Dublin it was headed by Phil Garland, who has now gone on to work in the HSE.
The former Clinical Director of the victim helpline set up by the religious orders - Faoiseamh - was none other than Maeve Lewis, the head of One in Four, the organisation made famous by Colm O'Gorman that still features heavily in the media whenever the clerical abuse scandals are back in the news.
The head of the national child protection office in Maynooth is a Northern Presbyterian, Ian Elliott. It cannot be said often enough that he proved his mettle when he forced the de facto resignation of Bishop John Magee from the helm of the diocese of Cloyne after he judged that Bishop Magee had not followed child protection protocol properly.
This proves that the system has accountability built into it. Obviously this is vital as any system will ultimately only be robust if there is a high price to be paid for significant failure.
Resign
In this sense, the Church's child protection system is much more robust than that of the State because no social worker that we know of has ever had to resign because of a failure to protect children.
For example, 20 minors have died in the care of the HSE over the last 10 years and not a single social worker has been publicly named, yet alone resigned in the full glare of publicity. Why not?
In addition, it is never acknowledged that the Murphy Report actually shows that in 25 of the 45 cases of abuse examined by the report, the Dublin diocese actually handled the allegations appropriately.
This means that from around the mid-1990s, the Dublin diocese had begun to get things right.
However, the impression we got from the media, and from some of the victims, is that this is far from being the case.
At this stage, the Church needs to do a far better job explaining to the public what it in fact has done in the area of child protection. If it doesn't begin to do this, the public will go on believing it has done nothing.
To this end it might be an idea to establish someone whose only task is to tell the public, to tell Mass-goers, to tell the media, to tell politicians, to tell all relevant professionals, about the Church's child protection system.
Lay figure
Such a person would have to be a lay figure for obvious reasons and of considerable seniority, someone the public would instinctively trust.
Their job would be to ensure that, at a minimum, Mass-goers would know what the Church has done, and then, every time the scandals are back in the public eye, this individual would be the media's 'go-to' person.
He or she would also make it their job to deal with gross errors of fact, for example, that the Vatican issued documents that ordered the Church to cover up the scandals.
What we can say with certainty is that if the Church does not finally get across to the public the fact that it has learned and done a lot since the scandals became public, its reputation will never even begin to be repaired.
