Diocese fails to explain delay investigating abuse report
AS Limerick waits for news of the fate of Bishop Donal Murray in the Vatican the Diocese of Limerick has been unable to explain why it took over seven months in 2006 to respond to a woman who wanted to report clerical abuse she had witnessed by a priest of the diocese in 1962.
The West Limerick native, now living in Dublin, told the Limerick
Leader this week that when she was five, a priest who is long since deceased had invited her and two other girls into his house.
The priest had taken one of the girls, then aged nine, over his knee, lifted her skirt and started to spank her in front of the other two girls.
"He was a big man with fierce bushy eyebrows. He seemed to us, as children, like a ferocious giant. I thought I was going to be next. He handed the three of us sweets and pushed us back out the door. The older girl who was spanked said 'the dirty f***er', language I didn't understand at that time. She didn't even seem surprised by what happened."
It was after the suicide of Caherdavin abuse victim Peter McCloskey in April 2006 – after which the Diocese again urged clerical abuse victims to come forward to the gardai, the HSE or the diocese – that the West Limerick woman contacted the diocese to report what she had seen.
Two priests, one a formidable canon lawyer, were then the diocesan delegates dealing with abuse allegations. She wrote to one of these three times between May and November 2006, once by registered post.
She received "no response or acknowledgement" to letters she found personally difficult to write but did so out of a sense of responsibility at a time when the Church was asking people with information to come forward.
She then spoke to a priest friend in Limerick,who put her in touch with
the second delegate. He called her back within an hour.
While Diocesean secretary, Fr Finnerty, was this week in Rome with Bishop Murray, another diocesan spokesperson said the Diocese was aware of the complaint made in 2007 and details were passed on to the
gardai.
Counselling and an opportunity to meet Bishop Murray was offered to the
woman as soon as she made the complaint, it was stressed.
The woman agreed this was the case but said she had never been given an explanation on why it took so long to meet diocesan representatives.
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