BISHOP OF Cloyne John Magee can no longer be trusted to handle allegations of clerical child sexual abuse and should step down, according to the parents of a young woman who alleges that she was sexually abused for several years by a priest in the diocese.
The couple said they had no wish to engage in anything that would damage the Catholic Church but they believed people could no longer trust Dr Magee to handle any complaints of clerical child sexual abuse given the manner in which he had dealt with their daughter’s complaint.
“Who could trust our friend in Cobh to do the right thing now about anything. That’s the bottom line – I don’t want to get at him but as I said, his tenure is flawed . . . there’s an obligation on him to stand down and let the new broom clean up the mess that’s there.
“He was [the] cause of the old problem; not the abuse now, but the handling problem and how in God’s name is he qualified to handle the new guidelines that are there now and in that context, I’m talking about morally,” the girl’s father said.
The couple, who were speaking under the pseudonyms Gerard and Mary on the Marion Finucane Show on RTÉ Radio 1, told how they first approached Dr Magee after their daughter informed them she had been sexually abused by a priest in the diocese when she was just 14-years-old.
The father of the girl said they had approached Dr Magee about the priest, identified in Ian Elliott’s report for the National Board for Child Protection as Fr B, because their daughter had informed them that he was continuing to abuse young girls.
The girl’s mother told how they had opted not to notify the gardaí but instead brought it to Dr Magee’s attention and felt “relieved” when they had done so as they “expected him to do what should be done”.
The girl’s father said they were later contacted by Msgr Denis O’Callaghan who informed them that he was Dr Magee’s delegate and that he was dealing with the priest, Fr B, and he apologised for what had happened their daughter and said he would be in touch in due course.
“Msgr O’Callaghan came back and told us that priest had received some counselling and that he was now fine and there should be no more problems and it was okay for him to be in ministry again as a curate,” said the girl’s father, adding that he was very angry at this response.
“We’re not here on some sort of clergy-bashing exercise – we’re here for the victims and my opinion of Bishop Magee is that his tenure is seriously flawed over the way he handled things – he said himself that he made an error and had failures; that makes him unfit in my eyes to continue.”
A Diocese of Cloyne spokesman said that if anyone has concerns about how allegations of clerical child sex abuse were handled by the diocese, they should contact the commission of inquiry set up by the Government when it begins it work.
