Catholic abuse aided by police

[moobu2]

TONY EASTLEY: A shocking report released overnight reveals that sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland was covered up for decades by both the church and police.

Four archbishops have been named for their mishandling of hundreds of allegations.

The 720-page report says the official policy from 1975 to 2004 was to protect the reputation of the church at the expense of the victims.

Here's Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

EMMA ALBERICI: Maree Collins was sexually assaulted in 1960. When she reported the abuse the Catholic Church moved the priest to another parish. The report says that was a common practise for dealing with abusive priests - there was a conspiracy to protect the church not the welfare of the children in its care.

MAREE COLLINS: This was a system of cover-up, of protecting the institution and it's going to be the same wherever the Catholic Church is.

EMMA ALBERICI: In one case a priest admitted to attacking more than 100 children but instead of helping those defenceless members of the parish the church covered it up.

Ireland's Justice Minister Dermot Ahern is adamant that those complicit in the abuse of children should be made to pay.

DERMOT AHERN: The Government will decide in relation to this one way or the other, but ultimately I think it's fair to say that the church should not be allowed to get away with what has happened in relation to this.

EMMA ALBERICI: For seven years until 1995, Cardinal Desmond Connell kept incriminating documents locked away in a secret vault. By hiding the clergy's crimes, he had allowed countless other children to fall victim to what the report dubs "the church's evil".

At a press conference after the report's release, Dublin's current Archbishop Diarmuid Martin was contrite.

DIARMUID MARTIN: As Archbishop of Dublin and as Diarmuid Martin a person, I offer to each and every survivor my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened.

EMMA ALBERICI: The relationship between some senior members of the force and priests and bishops in Dublin was described as inappropriate. Rather than investigate complaints from children police simply reported the matter to the Dublin Catholic Diocese. At least one perpetrator, the report says, was allowed to flee the country.

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[MichiganVote]

1. Aided by clerics in other religions too.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. What the hell's the matter with you, trifling with this sex abuse stuff

when someone, somewhere might be getting an abortion? Have you no sense of perspective? How are priests supposed to reproduce except by molesting kids and then forbidding abortions of pregnancies due to child molestation?

[TheMadMonk]

4. I know you are speaking tongue in cheek. Howerver, it's no laughing matter...

...when for centuries SOP in all too many such situations was for the mother to "come down" with a six month illness, and for the child to be mrdered and thrown into a charnel pit without ceremony or a jot of conscience.

[DeSwiss]

3. Both is these institutions....

...have traditionally supported each other's excesses. The state needs a docile and malleable populace that is easy to control and tax as necessary. And the church needs continued and stable support to carry-on a lifetime of leisure and ease for the priesthood, to go along with their power-tripping megalomania that they are somehow conduits between GOD (WRIT-LARGE) and us peons.

The commonality of the ideas from both these institutions being: THEY ARE ALL FULL OF SHIT.

- They are merely opposite sides of the same coin......

K&R