Related Research Articles
There have been many cases of sexual abuse of children by priests, nuns, and other members of religious life in the Catholic Church. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the cases have involved many allegations, investigations, trials, convictions, acknowledgement and apologies by Church authorities, and revelations about decades of instances of abuse and attempts by Church officials to cover them up. The abused include mostly boys but also girls, some as young as three years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Criminal cases for the most part do not cover sexual harassment of adults. The accusations of abuse and cover-ups began to receive public attention during the late 1980s. Many of these cases allege decades of abuse, frequently made by adults or older youths years after the abuse occurred. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations and moved abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse continued.
Seán Fortune was a Catholic priest from Ireland, and child molester, who allegedly used his position to gain access to his victims. He was accused of the rape and sexual molestation of 29 different boys. He committed suicide while awaiting trial.
The Ferns Report (2005) was an official Irish government inquiry into the allegations of clerical sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns in County Wexford, Ireland.
Colm O'Gorman is the executive director of Amnesty International Ireland. He is founder and former director of One in Four.
Denis Brennan is an Irish former Roman Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Ferns between 2006 and 2021.
Micheál Ledwith is a former Catholic priest of the Diocese of Ferns in County Wexford from 1967 to 2005.
Donal Collins was a priest of the Diocese of Ferns. He was appointed principal of St Peter's College, Wexford by Bishop Brendan Comiskey in 1988 despite his removal by Comiskey's predecessor, Bishop Donal J. Herlihy, following allegations of Collins sexually abusing pupils in his charge. The knowledge relating to the earlier allegations does not appear to have been made known to Comiskey.
The Diocese of Ferns is a Roman Catholic diocese in south-eastern Ireland. It is one of three suffragan dioceses in the ecclesiastical province of Dublin and is subject to the Archdiocese of Dublin. The incumbent Ordinary is Gerard Nash.
Philip Boyce, OCD, was Bishop of Raphoe from 1 October 1995 until 2017.
This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.
As distinct from abuse by some parish priests, who are subject to diocesan control, there has also been abuse by members of Roman Catholic orders, which often care for the sick or teach at school. Just as diocesan clergy have arranged parish transfers of abusive priests, abusive brothers in Catholic orders are sometimes transferred.
The sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne was investigated by the Commission of Investigation, Dublin Archdiocese, Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, examining how allegations of sexual abuse of children in the diocese were dealt with by the church and state. The investigation, which resulted in the publication of the Cloyne Report in July 2011, was led by Judge Yvonne Murphy. The inquiry was ordered to look at child protection practices in the diocese and how it dealt with complaints against 19 priests made from 1996.
The sexual abuse cases in Dublin archdiocese are major chapters in the series of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Ireland. The Irish government commissioned a statutory enquiry in 2006 that published the Murphy Report in November 2009.
From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children associated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of sporadic, isolated reports. In Ireland, beginning in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish government enquiries established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over decades. Six reports by the former National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church established that six Irish priests had been convicted between 1975 and 2011. This has contributed to the secularisation of Ireland and to the decline in influence of the Catholic Church. Ireland held referendums to legalise same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018.
The sexual abuse scandal in Providence diocese is a significant episode in the series of Catholic sex abuse cases in the United States and Ireland.
Suing the Pope is a March 2002 documentary by Colm O'Gorman and the BBC which details the abusive activities of priest Sean Fortune and the response of the diocese of Ferns to his activities over the years.
The Murphy Report is the brief name of the report of a Commission of investigation conducted by the Irish government into the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin. It was released in 2009 by Judge Yvonne Murphy, only a few months after the publication of the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse chaired by Sean Ryan, a similar inquiry which dealt with abuses in industrial schools controlled by Roman Catholic religious institutes.
Éamonn Oliver Walsh is an Irish former Roman Catholic prelate who served as auxiliary bishop of Dublin between 1990 and 2019.
This article summarizes allegations and investigations of child sexual abuse by clergymen in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Limerick, Ireland.
Donal Herlihy (1908–1983) was an Irish Roman Catholic clergyman who served as the bishop of Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns from 1964 to 1983.
References
- ↑ Appointments of Bishop Comiskey
- ↑ "Read Bishop Comiskey's statement of resignation". RTÉ News. 1 April 2002. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
- ↑ "Pope accepts Comiskey's resignation". RTÉ News. 6 April 2002. Retrieved 23 June 2011.
- ↑ Comiskey's turbulent career assessed
- ↑ Administrator. "Dr Brendan Comiskey sscc". www.sacred-hearts.net. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
- ↑ "How the church dealt with the allegations in Ferns". The Irish Times. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
- ↑ BBC News on Comiskey
- ↑ "Disgraced Bishop Comiskey breaks silence on clerical sex abuse scandal - Independent.ie". Independent.ie. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
