Sins of the father

The Roman Catholic Church throughout the world has been rocked by allegations of sex abuse. Yet in Scotland, officials appear reluctant to admit they have a problem, even when faced with the evidence

THE priest held Liam's head in his hands and told the boy to keep looking straight forward at the crucifix nailed to the wall. "You're a special boy," the priest said, holding the child on his knee. "Different to all the other boys. God loves you, and he's asked me to make sure you go to Heaven."

Liam, aged just eight, stared at the cross on the wall while it blurred and weaved before him as his eyes filled with tears. It was always different, but it was always the same. The sexual abuse took different forms - yet the routine prologue to the inevitable assault was a familiar ritual. The priest would sit the child on his knee, facing away from him, tell Liam to stare at some icon or votive picture such as the Sacred Heart on the wall of his chapel house and whisper in the boy's ear how much God loved him. Minutes later, the sexual assault would be over. Then the priest would turn Liam towards him and cuddle him, telling him he'd go to Heaven, sometimes adding: "It wasn't that bad, was it, son?"

This all happened 42 years ago in a Lanarkshire town. For legal reasons, the names of the victim and the abuser cannot be revealed, nor can the town where the abuse took place. Until two years ago, Liam, now 50, kept his silence, forcing the memories of his rape and abuse to the back of his mind. Then he read a small article in a newspaper. It told a story of abuse at the hands of a priest almost identical to his own. The crime had happened in Ireland and the abuser was not the same priest who raped Liam, but the details - the words the priest spoke to his victim, the type of sexual activity the child was forced into, the fear of God and the terror of hell that was instilled in the boy by the rapist - held up a mirror to his own experience.

Liam took the simple but brave step of contacting the Roman Catholic hierarchy. At least one bishop and two other very senior clergymen were informed about Liam's allegations. By the end of 1998, the police had been called in and a full investigation was underway. After a long and detailed inquiry a report is now with the procurator fiscal, although the man accused has not yet been charged with any offence.

Instead, the priest under investigation still continues to visit Catholic primary schools in the west of Scotland, a normal part of the duties of any serving priest. The official response of the Catholic hierarchy is to allow civil justice to take its course. There did not appear to be any desire at least to remove the priest from duties, pending investigations, as the Church's special adviser on sex abuse has suggested.

Last night, Monsignor Tom Connolly, the Catholic Church's press and media officer, said tersely: "The matter is in the hands of the police and I am saying nothing else."

As details of the Sunday Herald's investigations began to circulate among the Church's highest offices at their headquarters on the Clyde, a meeting was hastily called to discuss the accusations and to formulate some kind of response. Some who attended will have been present the last time allegations of a similar nature were made - in 1995, when they resulted in the conviction of Father Desmond Lynagh for gross indecency. Yet the Roman Catholic Church does not appear to acknowledge that it has a serious problem to deal with in Scotland.

In the USA, payouts to victims of sex abuse by priests now run into millions. The Church in Australia is facing a similar crisis. In England, these sordid cases are coming into the public domain at a depressingly regular rate. The clear inference to be drawn from the Scottish Church's perceived insouciance, is that it is in denial and will continue to cover up these cases until forced, at the point of a gun, to hand over the abusers. The damage to the integrity of the Scottish Catholic priesthood as more cases are revealed is incalculable. It will not be easily repaired.

Year on year, recruits to the priesthood are down while the numbers of priests applying to Rome for dissolution of their vows is increasing. The Church refuses to reveal actual figures, but close scrutiny of each year's Catholic calendar, a book which names every serving priest in Scotland and his current parish, begins to tell a different story. This week a well-placed source within the Catholic Church in Scotland said: "There is no doubt that the Church's desperation for more priests to serve their parishes has resulted in them taking on recruits who, previously, would have been deemed unsuitable."

A police investigation in a case such as Liam's can take many months. In the world that exists outside of the Church there is no question that an alleged abuser would be removed from a post while enquiries were being conducted. It would be surprising if the Catholic Church in this instance was not being similarly advised to do so by some of its own advisers.

Connolly's eagerness to defend the reputation of the Church, to act as a rapid rebuttal unit when the sacred is under attack from the temporal, is understandable. This week, however, it was clear that he did not fully appreciate the effect that some of his responses would have. His irritation was misplaced when informed that a man named Michael X also came forward this week with new allegations about sex attacks he had suffered. Michael suffered abuse at the hands of Father Lynagh, a priest who taught Michael while he was studying for the priesthood himself at Blair's College.

Michael has now claimed he was also sexually abused by Father Frank Kennedy, his spiritual advisor at Blair's College. The abuse began after Michael informed Kennedy that he had been molested by Lynagh. Lynagh was later jailed for the abuse. Kennedy is now dead. When the Sunday Herald put the allegations against Kennedy to Monsignor Connolly, he replied: "Michael X can talk to you all he likes, for us the matter is over. He may have made these allegations to you, but he never made them to me. Father Kennedy is dead and there ain't much I can do about that. So that is that." Connolly also said that he felt any investigation by the Sunday Herald into the instances of sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church was "gutter journalism".

Victims such as Liam and Michael X are not motivated by a desire to damage a Church that they are both still clearly drawn to. But the depressing inability of influential Catholic clergy to express something approaching remorse and shame has aggravated their wounds. Now, though, they and others who have yet to come forward may have an unlikely champion.

Alan Draper is a former social worker and university ethics lecturer who works as an independent adviser to the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland on child abuse. He believes Liam's allegations. He recommended that Liam's abuser, who is a middle-ranking clergyman, be suspended from the priesthood. Draper is also seriously concerned that Liam's rapist could still attack again, even though he is now an elderly man. "I realised it was an immediate risk when I heard the details of the case. There is obviously a danger for other children and the man should have been stood down pending an investigation," he said.

Draper was drafted in by the Church as a special adviser on paedophile priests because of his expertise in dealing with child sex abuse. It is his job to advise the hierarchy on how to deal with the child molesters moving among the priesthood. He believes Liam's story and he urged the hierarchy to suspend the abuser. "I am personally worried that the man who Liam accuses of sexually abusing him is still working as a priest and having contact with children," said Draper.

He adds that regardless of whether or not the priest has been charged, the very fact that an allegation of sexual abuse has been made should result in him being suspended and kept away from children and vulnerable adults. Draper, who has studied sexual abuse within the priesthood across the world, has recommended that the Church establish an independent investigative body to examine allegations of abuse against serving priests. This panel would investigate sexual abuse allegations in tandem with police inquiries.

Often victims of sexual abuse are so damaged by their experience they would be useless in a court of law and would be incapable of undergoing cross-examination by their abusers' defence team. With that in mind, Draper wants the Church to set up the independent body, staffed by lawyers, psychologists and social workers, to carry out its own inquiries. Even if the Crown finds insufficient evidence to launch a prosecution, the panel could still recommend a priest be removed from duties which bring him into contact with the public if there is felt to be a possibility that he carried out sex crimes. Yet the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has not even asked Draper to speak to the priest accused of raping Liam.

"The problem within the Catholic Church is the culture of the hierarchy - their mindset," said Draper. "They don't believe priests are capable of sexual abuse so they just fail to act. It's not a deliberate cover-up, but the results of the hierarchy's failure to act against priests accused of sexual abuse amounts to an unwitting cover-up. By failing to act they put other people at risk and allow the priest to go unchallenged."

Draper feels all his attempts to explain to the Catholic hierarchy how to deal with sexual abuse in the Church have been in vain. Liam's case proves he has been wasting his time. "There should have been an internal investigation by the Church. The accused priest should have been placed on leave and taken away from all pastoral duties."

After several interviews with Liam, Draper says the Church's failure to remove his abuser from public church duties "frightens" him, arguing that at the very minimum the Church has to make sure the priest is kept well away from children pending a final decision by the procurator fiscal's office whether or not he will be prosecuted.

The Sunday Herald faxed a copy of a sworn affidavit by Liam to Connolly. Liam's report begins with the banal details of his life - his age, his address, the fact he's divorced, how many children he has - and then moves directly on to the catalogue of sexual abuse he suffered.

In the late 1950s, Liam's abuser took over as the new parish priest in a Lanarkshire town, he explains. "The first approach which he made to me involved me simply sitting on his knee," said Liam. "He would say that I was a chosen child and that because of that I was to keep matters between us secret."

Gradually, the assaults grew more serious. The affidavit is excruciating in its forensic detail. "At the end ... he would cuddle and caress me and tell me that God loved me. This type of abuse occurred over a period of about two months. I can't remember how many times I was abused by him." Liam has since endured years of alcoholism, which he attributes in part to the sexual abuse he suffered, and has become psychiatrically disturbed by his ordeal.

The Church, however, is clinging to the hope that the stories of Liam and Michael X are merely two very isolated cases and that they do not in themselves represent an epidemic. The evidence in other parts of the globe, where the cassock and dog collar are not as fervently revered as they have been in Scotland's working class Irish Catholic community, suggest they may be wrong. Michael X has written proof in the form of letters that some of the most senior members of the Scottish clergy knowingly allowed his abuser, Lynagh, to remain in the priesthood and in contact with children for years after he abused Michael during the 1970s.

The contents of the letters reveal the mindset within the Church which allows paedophiles to prosper. In one written by Father Jim Clancy to the mother and father of Michael, the priest admits it took him a week to tell the Catholic hierarchy about the abuse Michael was suffering.

Clancy tells Michael's parents that James Monaghan, a former auxiliary bishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, had been informed of the claims, adding: "He said that he was grateful to have the information and that he would pass this on to the Cardinal [Cardinal Gordon Gray, Archbishop of Edinburgh]. He didn't want to do this before the Cardinal went to the conclave but will do when he comes home." The conclave was to elect John Paul II to the papacy. Said Michael: "It seems that continuing the ritual, the pomp, the circumstance, the power and the presence of the Church subordinates everything - even the sexual abuse of a child. My abuse was less important than the Cardinal wielding power in Rome. My abuse should have been at the top of his agenda."

Clancy's letter goes on to point out that Lynagh has been moved to a parish in Stirling and "Bishop Monaghan said that he would personally keep an eye on [him]". It wasn't until nearly 20 years later that Lynagh was jailed for sexually abusing Michael.

In a letter dated May 1994 from Keith O'Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, the Church told Michael X that his abuser had undergone therapy and had been given the job of running the Gillis centre, a Catholic retreat on the east coast which was often visited by children.

When Michael wrote back asking why Lynagh had been given a job allowing him access to the young, O'Brien told him that keeping Lynagh at the Gillis centre and within the priesthood meant he was less "vulnerable to victims". It's a curious, almost warped, use of language. Strange that O'Brien doesn't say that victims will be less vulnerable to Lynagh. It is as if the children that Lynagh abused tempted him.

Michael X has his own analysis of the comments. "It shows that the Church has always put its priests before its child victims. To protect the priest is to protect the Church, to help the victim is to damn the Church. Why doesn't it just do the right thing?"

Copyright 2000
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