Published: Wednesday, 16th December, 2009 6:00pm

Bishops were told abusers 'could be rehabilitated'

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As late as 1992, an American expert, called in to address a meeting of the Irish bishops, told the clergy that 90 per cent of abusers could be rehabilitated, the Bishop of Meath, Rev. Michael Smith, has told the Westmeath Examiner in an interview this week.

Two years later, another American expert, back to address the same subject, said the opposite was true: that rehabilitation was rare.

The Bishop said "shamed and shocked" were the words that described his reaction to the Murphy Report.

"There are no other words for it. Some awful mistakes were made," he said.

"I was taken aback to find the scale. I found the scale of it frightening."

He's not in any way trying to excuse any of what happened. But there were, he points out, failures by the HSE and the Gardaí as well as by the Church.

However he adds, it would be worthwhile undertaking an analysis of what the medical and psychiatric professions' understanding of the nature of abusers was 20 years ago.

"The two things we have learned - and I mean everyone has been on a learning curve - the two things are the manipulative nature, and the compulsive nature of abusers.

"You will find very little written about that before twenty years ago, and if there is any group that should be investigated, I would certainly welcome an analysis of the medical and psychiatric understanding.

"As an example: I have been attending bishops' meetings since 1970. The first time it came up at a bishops' meeting, for serious discussion, we got an American expert in 1992, that came to talk to us.

"His view was that 90 per cent of abusers could be rehabilitated. Two years later, we had another expert, a younger fellow, and his view was the very opposite, and obviously, the second one was the accurate one, because rehabilitation is rare.

"It was out of that second one that we drew up the framework document in 1996, and I can say that was the first document that set out procedures on how to deal with complaints."

Priests

Priests aren't, he says, disheartened by what has been emerging about the Church in the last few years.

"But they are very ashamed, of it," he admits.

He believes the members of the church have been very hurt, and feel very let down by the mistakes that were made; and the bid to avoid scandal was done at enormous cost to children.

"But the fact is that we are a church of sinners.

That is the basic understanding of the church: trying to live a life that Christ would have asked us to live, and we rarely measure up."

Complaints

The Diocese has on its website a range of resources on child protection, and unhesitatingly, the bishop says his advice to anyone with a complaint about anyone - clerical or otherwise - is to go straight to the Gardaí.

"If someone has a complaint about a priest, they should go to the Guards - because we report it to the Gardaí anyway," he says.

In the Meath diocese. Fr. Sean Henry is the Designated Officer who oversees child protection in the diocese; there is a Safeguarding Children Committee which manages all aspects of policy development, training and support at diocesan and parish level; an Advisory Case Management Committee appointed by the bishop to work on all aspects of case management, including reporting and pastoral care; and three resource persons who facilitate the training of church personnel management.

The Diocese works closely, he says, with the HSE, an exercise he has found "fruitful".

Married priests

The question as to whether there would be so much clerical sexual abuse if priests were allowed marry is firmly rejected by Bishop Smith.

"There are lot of celibate people living in society, who aren't priests; and on the basis of any analysis that is done, the incidence relating to priests and religious reflects the rest of society," he says, pointing out that much sexual abuse is carried out within the home, and that, marriage is no bar against molestation.

"No-one would claim it's an easy life," he says of the single state of priests.

"But it's an enormous witness, and that is an objective, to feel in life that it is worth making that sacrifice for, and seeking, in a very limited way, to share that vision and objective with people."