Oaths of Silence Forced On Fr. Brendan Smyth's Victims

[barrym]

Pican was on French tv recently. He stated clearly that he (still) considered he was right not to report the priest...."it was an internal matter" he said.

wtf

Bye, Barry

[Andrew49]

The cardinal defended his role in the investigation, stating his actions were part of a process that removed the shamed cleric's licence to act as a priest.

"Frankly I don't believe that this is a resigning matter," Brady said.

[Trampas]

The cardinal defended his role in the investigation, stating his actions were part of a process that removed the shamed cleric's licence to act as a priest.

"Frankly I don't believe that this is a resigning matter," Brady said.

YouTube - The Case Against Brady

We have a responsibility to distinguish degrees of culpability here. Brendan Smyth was a criminal who ingratiated himself with the parents of his victims before going on to abuse those children. His crimes simply don't bear thinking about. I carry no torch for the RC church but I do suggest that Smyth's conduct may have been beyond the perspective of his superiors.

[cry freedom]

We have a responsibility to distinguish degrees of culpability here. Brendan Smyth was a criminal who ingratiated himself with the parents of his victims before going on to abuse those children. His crimes simply don't bear thinking about. I carry no torch for the RC church but I do suggest that Smyth's conduct may have been beyond the perspective of his superiors.

In any world of real morality this Brady gentleman would be facing criminal charges.
In one way it is heartening.
The fact that the civil law in some countries has evolved to a higher plane than than RC cannon law surely augurs well for the future of humanity.
Thank you religion. You have had your day. Now it is time to move on.

[Andrew49]

We have a responsibility to distinguish degrees of culpability here. Brendan Smyth was a criminal who ingratiated himself with the parents of his victims before going on to abuse those children. His crimes simply don't bear thinking about. I carry no torch for the RC church but I do suggest that Smyth's conduct may have been beyond the perspective of his superiors.

Between 1945 and 1989, Smyth sexually abused and indecently assaulted 117 children in parishes in Belfast, Dublin. The number of his victims in the United States and 7 other countries is unknown - or known only to his superiors in the Norbertine Order and local bishops where Smyth was transferred. Smyth assaulted children in hotels, cinemas, convents and other venues across nine different counties.

Unlike Cardinal Sean Brady, who climbed the ranks of the hierarchy after his 'investigation' of Smyth, and after forcing the Oaths of Secrecy onto Smyth's child victims, the man who sought to out the notorious abuser died in a foreign land, estranged from his order. Fr Bruno Mulvihill was a 19-year-old novice of the Norbertine Order when he first tried to warn his abbot about Fr Smyth in 1964. He overheard peculiar noises coming from the sacristy and reported them to the then Abbot Fr Felim Colwell. He was told he was "imagining things". Four years later, in 1968, Fr Mulvihill was acting as Abbot Colwell's secretary when he answered an early morning telephone call from Russell J McVinney, the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, in the USA. Because the abbot was too ill to come to the phone, the bishop asked Fr Mulvihill to pass him an urgent message.

"He said Brendan Smyth was being put on a plane back to Ireland in disgrace after it was discovered that he had been sexually abusing children in Providence, Rhode Island."

Fr Mulvihill died in a car crash in Germany in 2004, aged 59. Originally from Co Galway, he was an ambitious pupil, full of enthusiasm for the life he chose as a servant of God. But his decision to report the paedophile priest resulted in him being almost as disliked by his fellow Norbertines as the serial child abuser.

In 1995, Rev Kevin Smith, the Norbertine abbot who was Smyth's superior for 25 years, only grudgingly admitted that Smyth had abused children in just two parishes in the US to which he was dispatched.

[Andrew49]

In any world of real morality this Brady gentleman would be facing criminal charges.
In one way it is heartening.
The fact that the civil law in some countries has evolved to a higher plane than than RC cannon law surely augurs well for the future of humanity.
Thank you religion. You have had your day. Now it is time to move on.

It appears that cardinal Brady may well have committed a crime (in administering oaths of secrecy on children), provided the Offences Against the State Act 1939 is still in force(?). That act says:

17.—(1) Every person who shall administer or cause to be administered or take part in, be present at, or consent to the administering or taking in any form or manner of any oath, declaration, or engagement purporting or intended to bind the person taking the same to do all or any of the following things, that is to say:—

( a ) to commit or to plan, contrive, promote, assist, or conceal the commission of any crime or any breach of the peace, or

( d ) to abstain from disclosing or giving information of the Commission or intended or proposed commission of any crime, breach of the peace, or from informing or giving evidence against the person who committed such an act,

shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and shall be liable on conviction thereof to suffer imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years,

Here is a LINK to the full text of the Act.

Over to you now Minister Shatter - time to stop pussyfooting around with these guys. Fianna Fail has been consigned to history and it's time we consigned these enablers of child abuse to jail!

[L'Chaim]

That oath should mean nothing to the victims of that vile sick subhuman bas*ard. And the people who called for this code to be introduced should be ashamed of themselves. As long as those victims have breath left in their bodies they should be fighting for justice

[ArtyisBack]

Nothing wrong with that - preserves the integrity of the court.

[Andrew49]

The paedophile priest Fr Brendan Smyth's name has appeared in a book of prayers for the dead at a church in Newcastle, Co. Down. The Belfast cleric committed dozens of offences against children over a 40-year period and died in prison in the Republic of Ireland in 1997. Source

The Church looks after it's own. Whether it's the evil Smyth or his clergy colleague cardinal Sean Brady

[eyelight]

.
New claims over Cardinal Brady's role in sex abuse inquiry

This just in from the BBC...

New revelations about the failure of the Catholic primate of all-Ireland to protect children from abuse have been uncovered by the BBC's This World show.

It found Cardinal Sean Brady had the names and addresses of those being abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth, but did not ensure their safety.

The investigation centres on a secret church inquiry in 1975 when a 14-year-old boy was questioned about abuse.

Sean Brady's role in the affair became clear in 2010, when it became known that he had been present when the abused boy was questioned.

He claimed, however, that the boy's father had accompanied him, and described his own role as that of a note-taker.

However, the BBC This World investigation has uncovered the notes Cardinal Brady took while the boy was questioned.

The child's father was not allowed in the room, and the child was immediately sworn to secrecy.

What Cardinal Brady failed to tell anyone in 2010 was that Brendan Boland had also given him and his colleagues the precise details of a group of children, some of whom, were being abused by Smyth.

Cardinal Brady did interview one of them and swore him to secrecy.

This World spoke to all of the children who Brendan Boland had identified, they all told the programme that to the best of their knowledge none of their parent's or families were warned in anyway about the paedophile Brendan Smyth.

Wounded healer my a$$ !